NHS cyber attack: GPs and hospitals hit by ransomware

NHS cyber attack: GPs and hospitals hit by ransomware

So I flicked over to the news earlier and there was this report about GP's and hospitals being hit by a massive wave of ransomware. And it's a major thing as well as NHS hospitals in England and Scotland have been hit and affected by it. To the point that hospitals can't access patients details and some people have had to have important operations cancelled because of it. One guy was booked in to have a heart bypass operation that is very serious and it had to be cancelled. He was literally about to go in and they had to cancel on him due to not being able to access his details.

And I just thought, oh well that's quite bad I hope they get to sort it out soon. And I started to think about how a computer could become infected with ransomware and I thought, that's just like anything. Never open suspicious emails, don't click on unknown links, don't download and install questionable software that kind of thing.

Then I go to login to my VPS, to check how some of my campaigns are running. And then what do I see? That the background has been changed and there's a program running telling my my important files have been encrypted and I need to pay to have them decrypted.

Here's a screenshot of what I see on my VPS.


Now I'm not at worried about this as it's only a VPS and I don't have any files on it. I only have my software running on it and that's it. So obviously I'm not going to pay anything. I can just ignore it and carry on without it affecting me in any way.

I would dread to think what it must be like to actually have this ransomware infect your main PC though! And I think the only thing you could really do is to format your disc and reinstall a fresh Windows install on it.

This is just another reason (next to HDD crashing) why you need to have a backup for all of your important files. That way if it does happen you can just reinstall Windows.

I don't know how on earth my VPS became infected though. I don't think I've even opened IE on it. I can only assume that it was probed and then a vulnerability (hole) was found and they got in that way. And that's probably how it's happened for all the other PC's that have become infected by this ransomware.

Fancy targeting hospitals though. That's playing with peoples lives man.

Have you been hit by this ransomware?

What do you think of it?