This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Ransomware is undeniably nasty and unpleasant, but unlike the maliciousness of DDoS attacks and password stealing trojans, there's a style out. If you simply swallow your pride and pay the bribe, the nightmare is over… or so y'all would think. Kansas Middle Hospital was recently hit by ransomware, and those behind the assail didn't alive upward to their end of the bargain subsequently the ransom was paid. Rather than unlock the hospital's files, they asked for more money.

It doesn't matter if you're a regular internet user or the IT guy at a infirmary, a ransomware infection has the same consequences. After it'due south installed on a system, ransomware goes to piece of work encrypting your important files with a private primal that prevents you from accessing any of them. Some of the more "premium" versions volition show y'all a list of encrypted files and decrypt ane or two of them free to bear witness it's possible. If you lot want the rest of them, information technology'll cost yous between several hundred and several 1000 dollars, paid in untraceable Bitcoin.

The ransomware that infected Kansas Heart Hospital asked for a "small-scale amount" of money, according to hospital president Dr. Greg Duick. The hospital paid the ransom, but the decryption key was not provided. Instead, the extortionists asked for a second, larger payment in exchange for the cardinal. Duick says they didn't get it, but he declines to specify how much they were asking for.

kansas

A number of other hospitals have been hit with ransomware in the recent past. Just before this yr 10 Medstar facilities on the east coast were targeted. In that case, the damage was much more severe. The hospitals were forced to shut down their computer systems completely, which meant using old school pen and paper records. At Kansas Heart Hospital, Duick claims the administration had a plan in place to minimize the damage. Information technology never had whatever patient data at hazard and operations continued normally.

Strangely, this plan evidently didn't include backups. Or perhaps, the backups were stored on the same system as the files, significant they too were rendered inaccessible. Whatever the situation, Kansas Heart Infirmary clearly wasn't backing upwardly correctly. It'due south nice it didn't gamble patient data, but information technology should not take been necessary to pay whatsoever coin to the attackers in the outset place.

If this sort of ransomware double dip becomes common, information technology may be harder to excerpt payments from people in the futurity. It's not like these are trustworthy people in the first place, but now they can't even stick by their ain business concern model.