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Re: [LUG] nhs cyber attack

 

On 12/05/17 17:41, daniel Phillips wrote:
> Will this malware remove all patient details and personal
> information? Quite a worrying scenario!!  I assume information is
> backed up...should have switched to Linux, I feel along time ago.

You must be joking... I've heard from some ex-colleagues at Kings who
are currently fielding this and whilst it is certainly bad, this is
"just" your usual bog standard crappy ransomware that's finally snuck
onto the corporate network and sabotaged a lot of the end user Windows
boxes. NHS data security is basically non-existent and the firewalls are
essentially sieves - consultants, doctors, staff and random visitors all
BYOD and connect almost anything to the internal networks so this was
inevitable.

The vast majority of the really important stuff - patient notes, booking
systems, etc are relics from the last century and run in off-site data
centers on big iron: think AS400s, IBM Z series mainframes, HP-UX and
the like. Whilst that does in itself cause serious issues there is
literally zero chance of a clumsy Windows infection vector jumping
operating systems and hardware architectures. On the other hand all
email, groupware and daily use stuff like sharepoint and so on *does*
run on badly maintained and very out of date Windows servers so the
damage is going to be pretty catastrophic. Quite a lot of backup tapes
are currently being ordered from Iron Mountain as we speak.

Glad I don't work for the NHS any more... There are going to be a lot of
bad days at the office for the IT staff there.

Cheers
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