Hospitals becoming Prime Targets for Ransomware

[Elixer]

You want to know how low people can go?
These turds need to walk into a volcano.

Hospitals have been having a tough time with ransomware lately. Starting last month, when Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid close to 17k for a ransomware decryption key, more news has been released about other hospitals being affected by ransomware. Two new stories from Malwarebytes and Brian Krebs show that hospitals are not only incredibly vulnerable to ransomware, but also prime targets.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hospitals-becoming-prime-targets-for-ransomware/

 

[fleshconsumed]

I doubt hospitals are specifically targeted. Their target is anyone who is stupid enough to click that email link. It's just that hospitals are high profile and they also happen to have more money to pay up if they don't have any backups. And even if they do have backups, they're typically not real time and recovering a day's worth of x-rays and MRI scans is worth a lot more than $17K to a hospital.

 

[PliotronX]

I doubt hospitals are specifically targeted. Their target is anyone who is stupid enough to click that email link. It's just that hospitals are high profile and they also happen to have more money to pay up if they don't have any backups. And even if they do have backups, they're typically not real time and recovering a day's worth of x-rays and MRI scans is worth a lot more than $17K to a hospital.

They articulated it at the end of the article a little differently

I do not believe at this time that the ransomware developers and distributors in these stories are actually targeting hospitals. They are instead looking for vulnerable sites to hack in order to spread ransomware and hospitals that were infected did so by user error. I do believe, though, that business and organizations that are heavily data and document driven will in the future be specifically targeted by ransomware developers.

I agree though, what used to be vehicles used for toolbars and advertising has now turned diabolical with ransomware. DNS redirects and proxy injection aren't lucrative enough so the game has been stepped up.