Aside from the pandemic, a Canadian province, Newfoundland and Labrador, also suffered from cyberattacks against their healthcare institutions that led to system disruption and delayed many medical procedures and patient appointments.
This week, the province reported an incident when the sensitive data of three local healthcare institutions within their territory were hacked. Included in this data breach attack were patients’ health and personal records and employee information. The attack is also considered to have affected almost everyone in the Canadian province.
However, Newfoundland’s health minister has advised the affected healthcare institutions to refrain from revealing further information about the cyberattack, including the perpetrator, the type of attack, and the experts who helped solve it.
A security researcher said they are not sure why the recently attacked Canadian healthcare institutions have not provided details about the incident.
The researcher added that the institutions must notify and warn all involved people regarding the cyberattack despite being conservative about the details they want to give out to the public.
A Canadian broadcasting firm revealed that the province had experienced a string of ransomware attacks against healthcare institutions, government organisations, and companies during the pandemic. Furthermore, these attacks are said to have come from Russia. The culprits seize control of vulnerable systems in a target organisation, encrypt the data, and threaten the victim to destroy or leak it if they refuse to pay the ransom demands.
Back in 2019, three hospitals in Ontario have also been cyber-attacked and disrupted several computer systems. The threat actors had also contributed to diesel and jet fuel shortages in the US when notorious hackers attacked a pipeline company.
According to a University professor, Canada’s regional and provincial healthcare computer networks are prone to cyberattacks due to having many outdated software and system versions. Some system versions are too outdated that they can carry vulnerabilities that threat actors can easily exploit.
The recent cyberattack against Newfoundland is Canada’s largest healthcare system disruption as of date, alongside the pandemic. Nevertheless, they said they are actively working with security experts to mitigate the case and investigate all the angles related to the attack.
