Earlier this week, we reported that a "Suspected ransomware attack" took down the Universal Health Services hospital network, and that doctors and nurses were using paper records because the entire computer system was offline.
New reporting by AP shows that all 250 of the network's hospital facilities were "hobbled in last weekend's malware attack and efforts to restore hospital networks" are ongoing.
The chain has not commented on reports it was hit by ransomware, though its description of the attack in a statement Thursday was consistent with malware variety that encrypts data into gibberish that can only be restored with software keys after ransoms are paid.
UHS workers reached by The Associated Press at company facilities in Texas and Washington, D.C., earlier in the week described mad scrambles after the outage began to render care, including longer emergency room waits and anxiety over determining which patients might be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. (…)
BleepingComputer, an online cybersecurity news site, spoke to UHS employees who described ransomware with the characteristics of Ryuk, which has been widely linked to Russian cybercriminals and used against large enterprises.
