Pierluigi Paganini December 27, 2020

The Burlington-based University of Vermont Health Network has finally admitted that ransomware was behind the October attack.

In October, threat actors hit the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn and the University of Vermont Health Network. The cyber attack took place on October 28 and disrupted services at the UVM Medical Center and affiliated facilities.

A month later, the University of Vermont Medical Center was continuing to recover from the cyber attack that paralyzed the systems at the Burlington hospital.

In early December, Hospital CEO Dr. Stephen Leffler announced that the attack that took place in late October on the computer systems of the University of Vermont Medical Center is costing the hospital about $1.5 million a day in lost revenue and recovery costs.

Leffler estimated that they are about 70% recovered from the attack and that they are still working to determine the root cause of the attack.

“Hospital CEO Dr. Stephen Leffler estimated on a call with reporters on Tuesday that they are about 70% recovered from the attack.” state the post published by the Associated Press.

“Leffler says they’re still trying to pinpoint the exact root of the cyberattack, but they hope to provide more details about the investigation next week, including whether it was a ransomware attack similar to what other hospitals around the country experienced.”

Leffler revealed that the malware employed in the attack infected all 5,000 computers on the hospital’s network. The IT staff at the hospital will decouple parts of the network and it is going to enhance security measures.

Now officials at the Vermont Hospital confirmed that the incident was the result of a ransomware attack.

“On Tuesday, hospital officials said its information technology workers found a file directing them to contact the attackers if they wanted their systems restored, but it did not contain a request for money.” states the post published by the Associated Press.

“We considered it for about five seconds,” said Doug Gentile, the chief information officer for the UVM Health Network.

The hospital notified federal police which is still investigating the security breach, the good news is that patient data was not exposed.

The hospital has been restoring the backups and rebuilding all its 1,300, the operations are expected to be fully restored by early next month.

The hospital officials pointed out that they had already implemented strong security measures before the cyber attack, but evidently it was not enough.

“It’s become clear, really this is an arms race. I think you’ve all seen in the news some of the recent sophistication of cyberattacks that are being launched and it’s really just going to continue,” Doug Gentile added. “So, we all have to stay vigilant. We all are going to continually have to update our tools and our approaches to try to stay ahead of the bad guys in this situation.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Vermont Medical Center)

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