The FBI says it's investigating a computer virus that has crippled information systems at the major Washington-area hospital chain MedStar Health Inc.
MedStar Health is the largest hospital system in the Baltimore-DC area,
with ten hospitals. The virus has affected Washington's Georgetown
University Hospital and other medical offices in the region.
Medstar said in a statement that the virus prevented some employees
from logging into systems. But it said all of its clinics remain open
and functioning.
The hospital chain said it has no evidence so far that patient information had been stolen.
If someone hacking into a hospital group's computer system surprises
you, it shouldn't according to Andre Protas from Cyberpoint Security in
Baltimore.
"Once you have people getting infected by it, they have no idea what to do next," he said.
Cyberpoint Security specialized in breaching other companies' computer
systems to see how good their defenses are. He said he hasn't met a
system he couldn't crack.
"So far I haven't met one," Protas said. "My team is luckily batting 1,000 when it comes to this kind of intrusion work."
Protas said MedStar's hack is probably one of two problems. The worst
case scenario would be a data breach, where private information on
patients and employees has been stolen. If that's the case, he said it's
probably already gone.
"Depends on how they've secured their environment," Protas said. "But
for the most part, once you're in and you have access just like any
normal user would have access you can start pulling some of the data."
The other potential issue would be what's called 'ransom-ware.' Last
month a hospital in California was forced to pay $17,000 in the
cyber-currency 'bitcoin' to regain access to its own data, which the
hackers had encrypted. Protas said if that's what happened to MedStar,
they'll likely pay the ransom too.
If it's a data breach, eventually MedStar is likely to resort to
offering credit monitoring to anyone who's affected. The FBI is also
involved in the investigation.