Doppelpaymer ransomware crew fingered for attack on German hospital that caused death of a patient

The Doppelpaymer ransomware gang were behind the cyber-attack on a German hospital that led to one patient's death, according to local sources. The Aachener Zeitung newspaper carried a report from the German Press Association (DPA) that Doppelpaymer's eponymous ransomware had been introduced to the University Hospital …

[RM Myers]

Ugly

This doesn't sound like the simple phishing attack the commentards assumed on the original article. Even patching the original Citrix vulnerability wouldn't have helped, since the loader was already on the network. It would be interesting to know what further vulnerability was exploited when the malware payload was downloaded by the loader. Also, I wonder whether they waited to make recovery from backups harder, or because they needed an additional vulnerability that the network didn't have when the loader was dropped.

[RM Myers]

Re: Ugly

Oh never mind. If they didn't download the encryption malware until later, waiting wouldn't have allowed them to encrypt the backups. My bad.

[big_D]

didn't arrive

one patient who the hospital was unable to treat on arrival.

No, the emergency procedures were put in place and she was diverted to the next available emergency unit, an hour away.

[VanguardG]

It still amazes me that doctors and nurses with many years of education and experience just throw up their hands and don't even try to provide aid without computers. Sure they need to check for interactions between medications she might already be using or they may be adding, but was there no way to stabilize this patient somewhat using old-school methods before they sent he on to the next hospital? I'm not in the medical field, but it still seems hard to believe first-line medical personnel are this helpless without their silicon overlords.

Or was it the hospital admins who said no, because they weren't able to ensure they would be paid?

[RM Myers]

I doubt the doctors and nurses threw their hands in the air. If you have a patient with a head injury or possible stroke, for example, then you may very well need a CAT scan or MRI to determine the extent of injury and what treatment is needed, particularly whether brain surgery is required. And CAT scans and MRI's are not like x-rays, you need a computer to translate data into an image humans can interpret. Even a lot of blood tests are currently automated - I doubt most labs could even do simple blood chemistry tests now without automation.