NHS Hospitals hit by massive cyber attack

[user1491572121]

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/12/hospitals-across-england-hit-by-large-scale-cyber-attack?CMP=fb_gu

AnathemaPulsifer your link is over a year out of date, don't make things worse than they are, please.

From the screen shot shared on the BBC feed, and the way of writing the day used (5/15/2017), it would appear the attack is not from the UK:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/39901370

I believe these are usually russian hackers (although they can come from anywhere of course) and as far as i know, no-one has found a way around these that arent "pay them". The whole point of encryption being that its not un-doable by anyone else.

Hertfordshire too.

A small business near me in the back end of nowhere was hit with the same thing - pay money or lose all your files. Obviously not as serious as hitting the NHS but it is happening everywhere with frightening regularity.

Burn though it's not difficult to make it SEEM like it's from another country.

Might not just be confined to NHS England, a colleagues sister works in Scotland and says her system is down too.

Wonder how they'll do procedures like X-rays, whether they have old school back ups? All my daughters X-rays the doctors view online lately.

Jesus, this is really bad.

Hospitals all over the country affected, a couple here in the East, Down South, London and in the North

Do you know which part of Scotland, *gunsandbanjos'?
Interesting as the Scottish NHS is devolved and separate (as I discovered when I moved from one system to another)
will they have hit Scotland separately?

mind, our my nhs notes are so inaccurate I wouldn't mind mine being lost, but that is hardly the point...

I believe these are usually russian hackers (although they can come from anywhere of course) and as far as i know, no-one has found a way around these that arent "pay them". The whole point of encryption being that its not un-doable by anyone else.

I would hope GCHQ could have a good stab ...

Almost all electronic encryption is badly implemented, so there are ways in.

oh, it's everywhere it seems?

what a vile thing to do

Not 100% sure, I think the west coast?

Happened to our school and local charities last year. Utter bastards.

I'm not surprised NHS computer systems are shockingly vulnerable.

This type of thing was only a matter of time.

Appalling that its happened but it was always going to.

They do have back up systems in A&E though. Its not as if computer systems haven't gone done in isolation before.

According to the news site my husbands reading many NHS computers run Windows XP. There's been no security updates for it for years, Microsoft stopped supporting it three years ago.

It's most likely that this is all due to someone opening a dodgy email on a networked computer and it's spread like wildfire.

Trouble with ransomware is that no one has found a way to beat it yet, you either pay or wave bye bye to your data. Let's hope the NHS take regular backups and those are kept securely.

Could be the Russians trying to affect our election. Would there be any scandalous info on hospital servers?

This happened to the trust I work for last year, all scheduled operations have to be held over for about a week, we had no results from scans, X-rays etc and couldn't use he dart system for bloods for about 2 weeks - was a bloody nightmare. I work for a GP but it affected everybody across the whole trust.

I too wouldn't care too much if my files got lost, they can have them. There was a big campaign a few years ago (under Labour?) to share NHS notes on the internet across different health settings. While I agree with the principle, I didn't trust the system so opted out. I think it got dropped

There are no reports f it in the north east yet

I've been to my doctors surgery this afternoon and they're affected too. (East Anglia).

Outrageous. I am really angry about this. My hospital has just been added to the list of those affected.
Alas, I have no solution... I hope the government has an action plan for this.

I don't understand how they can't trace where the money is going. I believe they cant, just can't get my head around it

According to the news site my husbands reading many NHS computers run Windows XP. There's been no security updates for it for years, Microsoft stopped supporting it three years ago.

You can pay for extended support until 2019 (whether the NHS has is another matter).

Here's a story from 2 years ago. Bear it in mind when the "we had no idea" whines start.

Stealth was just on local radio that Northumbria Trust have been affected