Hollywood hospital hit with ransomware: Hackers demand $3.6 million as ransom

An internal emergency has been declared at a major US hospital in Los Angeles following a widespread ransomware-style cyberattack which has left staff unable to access vital patient data, it has been revealed.

@Copyright Hackingstuffs

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Centre, located in the heart of LA, is now dealing with hackers who are reportedly demanding over 9000 bitcoins – which equates to roughly $3.6m – to release the encryption keys to computer systems that hold patient data, X-Ray scans, CT scans and crucial lab work.
Why advertise with us

According to NBC Los Angeles, hospital president and chief executive Allen Stefanek said that staff first started to notice “significant IT issues” on 12 February, however reports indicate that the attack may have started over a week ago. Now, forensic computer experts from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the FBI have been called in to investigate further.

An unnamed doctor has admitted that the hospital’s computer system was hacked and is currently being held for ransom, adding that departments are now communicating through fax machines because they have no access to email. Furthermore, a number of patients have been transferred to other hospitals.

Meanwhile, a separate report by Fox (Los Angeles) reaffirmed that the cyberattack has directly affected the ‘day-to-day’ operations of the hospital.

What is Ransomware attack?

Ransomware is a type of malware which restrict access to the infected computers. And ask users to pay money to get access back to the system. Some type of Ransomware will encrypt the system hard drive in a way that you need to pay to decrypt it. While some may simply lock the system and display messages intended to coax the user into paying. This type of attack got popular from 2013.

NYPD Union website allegedly hacked by Anonymous

A cyberattack which shut down a website for the NYPD captains union, targeting it with malware, union officials said.

NYPD Union Website Attacked By Anonymous

Anonymous Hackers Group, which supported the Occupy Wall Street movement recently started an online war with ISIS, Last friday corrupted the website of the Captain Endowment Association.

“There are indications the attack on our website was orchestrated by a group identifying themselves as “Anonymous” who have a history of targeting police websites across the country,” wrote the union’s president Roy Richter, in a letter to members.

This group hacked into California Statewide Law Enforcement Association’s website in 2012– and released it’s members’ addresses, as well as credit card information.

Richter wrote that the captain’s association does not store any personal information about union members on the website, so that no “confidential information has been compromised.”

The letter also noted that the association was adding new security protections to the website, and that the union considered the attack more an irritation than a threat.

Guy Fawkes Day start with Hack of 28,000 Paypal Accounts

The hacking group Anonymous has made the day of 5th November a pretty exciting day with their activities better given as ‘hacktivities’ as they have chosen it as a global day of protest. The day which is celebrated as the Guy Fawkes Day has surely been the most memorable in many decades and surely given fitting tribute to the legendary revolutionary, which is natural since they have adopted the Guy Fawkes mask as a mark of anonymity and a symbol for its global social crusade against corruption and injustice. The Anonymous celebrated the day by bringing many heavyweight sites down and unleashing a series of attacks, all within a single day and other hackers were not behind in joining Anonymous. The sites brought down were the NBC Sports Rotoworld Forum and NBC Mobile, Symantec along with the fansite of Lady Gaga.
 

Guy Fawkes Day start with Hack of 28,000 Paypal Accounts

However, the Anonymous started the Guy Fawkes Day with the hacking of a PayPal server and some 28,000 PayPal accounts in the process. The Anonymous announced the hack on Twitter, in the tweet by AnonymousPress “Paypal hacked by Anonymous as part of our November 5th protest privatepaste.com/e8d3b2b2b1 #5Nov” (File removed now).   The private paste document contains some 27,395 entries from the payment service database table “mc_customers”, and it consists of encrypted passwords, names, emails, and corresponding phone numbers and the file was removed later on. This is one of the bigger PayPal hacks in the recent times and surely Anonymous chose a good target to start the day.

The chief of Public relations at PayPal has however denied any reports of a security breach and tweeted that they were investigating the claim but do not have any proof so far of the fact that their accounts have been hacked. In any case PayPal users are surely hoping that this has been an empty threat and their accounts are safe. Well, they are advised to check that by logging into their accounts to check the same. Moreover, according to the most recent update PayPal has responded with the statement, “It appears that the exploit was not directed at PayPal after all, it was directed at a company called ZPanel. The original story that started this and was retweeted by some of the Anonymous Twitter handles has now been updated.
 
This statement is surely a good thing for the many PayPal users and hopefully PayPal has not been affected in this cyber attack.

This is the manner in which the Anonymous started their Guy Fawkes Day and  there are many other activities which they have lined up for the day which included a Public protest at the British parliament and the White House. They had also threatened with a large scale attack on Facebook and the gaming giant Zynga. Well, there has been no malicious activity as of now as far as these two sites are concerned, but many other sites have been affected. However, this was to be expected as Anonymous had made it clear that they would make 5th November a day of protest and they surely have made their point clearly.