The Anssi is the cybersecurity policeman on the territory.

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DENIS CHARLET / AFP

  • Oloron hospital has been the target of a cyber attack since Monday and the perpetrators have demanded a ransom.

  • Interventions will have to be postponed for lack of a rapid return to normal.

  • This is the third cyberattack recorded in a month in a hospital environment.

Hackers have hit the streets again.

A large-scale cyberattack has hit the Oloron-Sainte-Marie hospital center in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques since Monday, severely disrupting its computer system, the third in a hospital in a month.

This hospital, which employs some 600 people for 321 beds and places in this sub-prefecture, has been hit by a "ransomware" attack by which hackers enter the computer system and then encrypt its files to make them inoperative , demanding a ransom to unlock them.

A ransom demand

On the screens of the Oloron hospital, messages in English appeared demanding a ransom of $ 50,000 in bitcoins (crypto currency).

Since it was spotted Monday by an engineer in charge of the establishment's IT infrastructure, agents have been working in degraded mode, in other words with paper and pencil.

The cyber attack affects most of the data related to patient health information, which could lead to postponements of some interventions, failing a rapid return to normalcy, the management explained.

It also complicates the (computerized) management of drug stocks, but without calling into question the anticovid vaccination campaign at this stage.

Hospitals, prime targets

This is the third cyberattack recorded in a month in a hospital environment after those which paralyzed the hospital center of Dax (Landes) and that of Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône), on February 8 and 15, and at the following which President Emmanuel Macron announced a response of one billion euros to strengthen the cybersecurity of sensitive systems.

A complaint was lodged with the gendarmerie, and the cybercrime unit of the Pau gendarmerie went there, alongside agents from Anssi (national information systems security agency), cybersecurity gendarme on the territory.

“We have disconnected all the workstations to limit losses, explained the director of the hospital Frédéric Lecenne to the local newspaper

La République des Pyrénées

.

We can recover our networks in 48 hours, as in three months.

"

Healthcare establishments, which manage sensitive data, have become privileged targets of the cyber threat since the health crisis, "the attack probably making it easier for hospitals to pay the ransom given the critical need for business continuity. ", According to a report from Anssi.

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