According to the news channel KWCH 12, the latest target of cyber criminals is Kansas Heart Hospital in Wichita. However, there is one peculiar thing about the Wichita hackers – the fact that they never made good on their end of the deal.
After getting the ransom for decrypting the victims’ files, the attackers do not restore the access to them. On the contrary, instead of decrypting the information from the hospital systems, the hackers demanded more money from victims.
The Hospital President Dr. Greg Durick, said that Kansas Heart Hospital initially paid “a small amount” in ransom, but the hackers refused to decrypt the hospital’s hijacked files.
After the second ransom demand, Kansas Heart closed negotiations, saying that they no longer felt “this was a wise maneuver or strategy.”
Dr. Durick told KWCH that Kansas Heart had a backup plan which immediately went into action and, “I think it helped in minimizing the amount of damage the encrypted agent could do.” The hospital says patient information was never in jeopardy and operations were never impacted.
Unlike the dirty games of Wichita attackers, the creators of the “uncrackable” TeslaCrypt ransomware virus recently gave the keys to let anyone affected retrieve their files.
This month, a ransomware attack on Congress was reported as well, and a hospital in Los Angeles had to pay over 40 bitcoin (about $17,000) after falling victim to a similar ransomware attack a couple of months ago.
