The Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago cyberattack was carried out at the start of the month by the Rhysida ransomware gang.
Over 200, 000 children are treated annually at Lurie, a top pediatric acute care facility in the United States.
The healthcare provider was forced to shut down its IT systems and, in some cases, delay receiving medical care as a result of the cyberattack.
Email, phone, MyChart access, and on-site internet were all affected.
Patients ‘ service prioritization systems were eliminated, and doctors were forced to use pen and paper for prescriptions because of the availability of ultrasound and CT scan results.
The Rhysida ransomware gang, who claims to have stolen 600 GB of data from the hospital, has listed Lurie Children’s on its extortion portal on the dark web as of today.
The stolen data is currently being offered by Rhysida ransomware for 60 BTC ($ 3,700,000 ) to a single buyer.
The deadline was set for seven days, after which the information will either be leaked for free on Rhysida’s platform or be sold to several threat actors for less money.
Lurie Children’s continues to be impaired
According to Lurie Children’s ‘ most recent status update, which was released on February 22, 2024, efforts to restore the IT system are still in progress, and some operational segments still experience service disruptions.
Parents are advised to bring a copy of their insurance card to appointments because the health record system, which stores this information, appears to be offline as well as their children’s medication bottles.
Because prescription preparation is still carried out manually, MyChart continues to be unavailable and wait times are longer than usual.
As things change to accommodate urgent care cases, some procedures and appointments may be canceled and rescheduled.
The time frame for paying medical bills has been extended for as long as the outage continues because the payment systems are also impacted. Additionally, the hospital currently does n’t offer no-show fees for appointments.
Recently, the Rhysida ransomware gang made a mistake when Korean researchers revealed the full details of an encryptor flaw that could be exploited to decrypt files without demanding a ransom.
According to the extensive disruption at Lurie Children’s, the decryptor, which law enforcement has used privately for a number of months may not be effective in the threat group’s most recent attacks.
Additionally, if Rhysida’s claims of data exfiltration are accurate, it would indicate that cybercriminals have irreversibly compromised the sensitive medical records of many young children.