Just this month, several hospitals were infiltrated by hackers demanding payment. (Hospitals, full of sensitive patient data, have been hit in the past, too.) The criminals’ playbook was pretty much the same as what’s used in most of these attacks. The hackers got in, used a type of ransomware to encrypt files and then demanded payment in return for the key. Here’s how David Wood, co-owner of an Australian medical center that recently got hit, described how it was hacked:
“They literally got in, hijacked the server and then ran their encryption software, ” he said, adding that the data was “secure in the sense that no one's taken any of it.” A security expert told the news media that the damage was extensive enough that the hospital would probably have to pay.