A Patient In A German Hospital Dies As A Result Of A Ransomware Attack

Ilustrasi (Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A ransomware attack on a computer system can turn out to be fatal. In which a patient reportedly died after a hospital computer system at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, was hit by a ransomware attack.

Gizmodo reported, Monday, September 21, this incident occurred last week, where a ransomware attack disrupted the hospital's IT system, which loaded random patient data and made it inaccessible. As a result, emergency services at the hospital are hampered.

Even a number of patients had to be transferred to other hospitals for medical treatment. Unfortunately, the life of a patient could not be saved considering his critical condition and had to be transferred to another hospital which was about 20 miles or 32 kilometers.

From local media reports, initially this ransomware attack was also aimed at another hospital, not Düsseldorf University Hospital. Although not disclosed in detail, no patient data was stolen or records of extortion from this incident.

German authorities said this attack was avoidable. This is because the attacker exploited a security system weakness in the Citrix VPN software that had actually been known since January 2020, and the German cybersecurity authority had warned about this.

Of course, if in the future there are cases of patient deaths related to cases of ransomware attacks. It is not impossible that this event will be the first cyber attack case that can claim a person's life.