In today’s installment of “straight out of Hollywood” (literally and figuratively), a Los Angeles hospital was nearly crippled by a ransomware attack on its network. Hollywood Presbyterian had to revert to paper medical records and registration for admitted cases, while emergency room patients were actually diverted to other hospitals, potentially causing life-threatening delays in trauma treatment.
What’s so horrible about a little computer glitch that would keep a hospital from treating a critically ill patient? Everything.
Ransomware, as the name implies, is malicious software that infects a network and roots around, often disabling critical systems and bringing business to a halt. In exchange for meeting the hacker’s demands, a clean-up option is offered in order to restore network function. In this hospital’s case, the details are murky while the FBI still investigates, but some reports uncovered by ArsTechnica claimed that the hospital’s computers were shut down for nearly a week and that the ransom amount was
around 9,000 bitcoin, or slightly under $4 million.
