The Universal Health Services shortly known as UHS was targeted by a massive cyber attack touted to be of ransomware genre and sources say that the incident disrupted the patient care on a severe note, as the authorities resorted to activities such as redirecting ambulances and patients to other nearby hospitals because of the unexpected digital downtime.
Those patients who are not on critical support are been given care through manual prescriptions in the hospital premises and those critical are been shifted to other facilities.
On an overall note, most of the hospitals in the 400+ network chain have been impacted, and that includes those operating in California, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington DC and Chicago.
With a staff of over 90,000 employees, The Universal Health Services is one of the largest medical facilities in the Western region of the globe as it treats over 3.9 million patients per year.
Highly placed sources say that the hospital network was hit by the RYUK Ransomware on Friday last week and add that the malware could have been circulated through an email phishing campaign.
IT staff of UHS assured that no patient or staff information was accessed or copied in the incident, and the malware spread was contained before any untoward incident could take place.
Details about the ransom demand note are being kept under wraps for the media. But a source from UHS reported on the condition of anonymity that the ransom demand note is reading “Shadow of the Universe” and is seen demanding $2 million for the decryption key.
Note- As per a statement released by Cybersecurity Firm CrowdStrike, Ryuk is linked with a Russian hacking group named Wizard Spider and has so far struck two shipping giants- Pitney Bowes and the US Coast Guard.
