Patients of a Vermont Hospital Are Left 'in the Dark' After a Cyberattack
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John Sipher
@john_sipher
The Kremlin and the White House collaborate to put bounties on US health workers.
The University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vt., was the victim of a cyberattack in late October.
Patients of a Vermont Hospital Are Left in the Dark After Cyberattack
A wave of damaging attacks on hospitals upended the lives of patients with cancer and other ailments. I have no idea what to do, one said.
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/hospital-cyber-attack.html?referringSource=articleShare
At lunchtime on Oct. 28, Colleen Cargill was in the cancer center at the University of Vermont Medical Center, preparing patients for their chemotherapy infusions. A new patient will sometimes be teary and frightened, but the nurses try to make it welcoming, offering trail mix and a warm blanket, a seat with a view of a garden.
Then they work with extreme precision: checking platelet and white blood cell counts, measuring each dosage to a milligram per square foot of body area, before settling the person into a port and hooking them up to an IV.
That day, though, Ms. Cargill did a double-take: When she tried to log in to her work station, it booted her out. Then it happened again. She turned to the system of pneumatic tubes used to transport lab work. What she saw there was a red caution symbol, a circle with a cross. She walked to the backup computer. It was down, too.
I wasnt panicky, she said, and then I noticed my cordless phone didnt work. That was, she said, the beginning of the worst 10 days of her career.
Cyberattacks on Americas health systems have become their own kind of pandemic over the past year as Russian cybercriminals have shut down clinical trials and treatment studies for the coronavirus vaccine and cut off hospitals access to patient records, demanding multimillion-dollar ransoms for their return.
Complicating the response, President Trump last week fired Christopher Krebs, the director of CISA, the cybersecurity agency responsible for defending critical systems, including hospitals and elections, against cyberattacks, after Mr. Krebs disputed Mr. Trumps baseless claims of voter fraud.
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