Altus Baytown Hospital was recently attacked by ransomware. Hackers encrypted documents containing sensitive patient information and, of course, demanded a ransom to decrypt them.
As reported by ABH, “Although our electronic health records were not affected, some of the locked documents contained folders with patient information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and medical information.”
Following the attack, the hospital launched an internal investigation to determine the vulnerabilities leading to unauthorized access to its systems.
To accomplish this, ABH hired security consultants to help decrypt the locked files. The experts discovered that the malware was a strain of the Dharma ransomware. Ultimately, ABH's backup files were successfully decrypted.
The positive side of the case is that, according to the results of the investigation, the files were not stolen from the servers.
After recovering all encrypted files, ABH security experts removed the ransomware from the hospital's systems and helped it implement appropriate protection measures to prevent any new ransomware attacks on its systems.
