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After injecting cancer hospital with ransomware, crims threaten to swat patients
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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If only hospitals weren't such lucrative businesses with millions of dollars to pay a ransom, they wouldn't be a target. No one is targeting ransomware to the Fire Departments or DMV.
The Dallas Fire Department was sure affected in their ransomware attack. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/dallas-ransomware-attack-progress-one-week-later/287-f0af11f2-1c52-4d33-a706-8fdfa1f0e5f1
I mean most ransomware isn’t targeted at all.
Municipalities are absolutely targeted by ransomware attacks. Texas has had several cities get hit within the past year or two alone. It takes down everything from their courts to their emergency services and water bill systems.
Its more likely that they are required to have insurance that would cover ransomware due to the sensitive information they have on patients
It's this. It's also one of the most profitable forms of insurance for the insurance companies since everyone needs it but few end up using it, and the fact that insurance exists at all drives the prices way up (like every other industry they touch).
On the other hand, once people started paying, the ransomware scene became an actual industry. Before, the "send money to this number to get your files back" part was a bonus scam and you'd almost never get a response, so getting ransomed was a death sentence for a business that didn't have working backups. Now the encryption key is sent 99% of the time the ransom is paid, and larger groups even offer tech support to their victims if they have trouble decrypting.
Source: half-remembered snippets from last year's CompTIA Network Security course. Can't actually double check it since we live in a capitalist hellscape where information is rented and goes poof after a few months.
The NHS in the UK gets targeted all the time and they aren’t exactly rolling in cash
Not yet, anyways.
Finnish municipal services get targeted