This week, the Irish Department of Health announced that the infrastructure of Irish healthcare had been hit by two separate cyberwar attacks, massively disrupting the IT systems and patient data. The attacks on the 13th and 14th of May have been described as “catastrophic“, as staff have had to work with paper records while IT systems are being recovered and evaluated after the event, and there are fears that some patient records have been obtained and could be leaked online.
A week on and the scale of the damage is still only just coming to light, as the country-wide system of healthcare has been turned upside-down by the largest cyber-attack ever performed on Ireland.
What Happened?
The cyberattacks appear to have been part of “ransomware” that was noticed by The Health Service Executive (HSE) in the early hours of Friday the 14th. Ransomware is used to enter a computer system and lock out the IT services from their data, by using encryption.
Because an encryption key is only known from both ends of the encryption – with the hackers having one side and the other being locked up – this is very difficult to breakthrough. Ransomware is like more conventional ransoming, where the hackers then attempted to sell the data back to HSE for an extortionate price.
To protect the system and all the files on it, IT services in Irish healthcare were closed down to stop the hackers from dealing any more damage. However, that has caused an enormous strain on the hospitals in Ireland, as without the computers that practically all workers have become used to relying on, they’ve now been forced to resort back to paper records to continue with care the best they can.
Masses of appointments have had to be cancelled and rescheduled, causing delays and confusion for many in Ireland. However, it appears that Covid-19 vaccinations have continued at a good pace throughout the week, which will be a saving grace for many in the pandemic. While IT services are closed down, they are being scrubbed of malware and made backup copies of, which illustrates just how big a job this is, which has been sprung on Irish officials with no warning.
The Usual Suspects
The eye of suspicion has fallen on Russia over these Irish ransomware attacks, which have not been the only ones lately. Recent cyberattacks with ransomware have been seemingly carried out by gangs operating in Russia, such as “Wizard Spider” or “Darkside“, which is responsible for the recent Colonial attack in America. Colonial Pipeline’s servers were targeted by cyberattacks from Darkside, which closed the company’s oil pipelines and refused to open them.
This led to a sharp spike in oil prices in America, made even worse by some people taking it into their own hands to collect and hoard oil, to varying degrees of success. Even Darkside was surprised by the chaos they caused.
Russian officials deny involvement in either of the two recent attacks, in America or Ireland, and they have offered to help if they are asked. However, there is still flak coming their way, as it is suggested they need to do more to combat cyberattacks and cyberterrorism that is happening in their territory.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab recently suggested that Russia cannot pretend it has nothing to do with them, as gangs operate to destabilize international targets from within Russia to little retaliation.
US President Joe Biden has said that they do not believe the Russian state was involved, but in both cases, there is speculation that these sorts of attacks could not be pulled off without some sort of government approval, be it simply overlooking the actions or assistance.
Regardless of whether recent ransomware assaults were state-sanctioned or not, it casts a pessimistic shadow over the future of cyberattacks and cybersecurity. Masses of damage have been caused just recently, affecting both the economy and private sphere, and healthcare and the public sphere.
There will need to be more security and more diligence to defend against the future of cyberattacks, as we become ever more reliant on the digital world, with the likes of data management, resource control or even cryptocurrency.
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