The cost of a ransomware attack can be very expensive. When attacking a computer network by some companies, ransomware can make data literally useless, locking users out of their privilege.
And when it happened in a computer network inside a hospital, the damage can be more than just money or data. Humans' lives can be at stake.
This was proven to be true in Germany.
One such attack is being blamed for the loss of a human life.
It happened when cybercriminals managed to infect computer systems at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf with a strain of ransomware, which crippled its entire IT network.
German authorities that managed to contact the attackers, made an appeal to have the hospital's files to be decrypted. The hackers did sent the decryption key, but not before the tragic tragedy happened.
A woman in critical condition needing urgent medical care, died because the hospital couldn’t accept emergency patients because of the cyberattack.
During the attack, the hospital's systems were down following the shut down of its 30 servers. The hackers were said to also have stolen some patients data during the attack.
This forced the hospital to cancel all surgical and emergency procedures.
The woman was on her way to the hospital when the attack happened. Because of this, the ambulance she was in rerouted to another hospital at the city of Wuppertal, which is more than 30 kilometers away.
It was the delay that costed her life.
The woman passed away while being transported.
When the police and officials started investigating, they found that the attack was actually targeting the university and not the hospital.
This clue was found in the ransom note that came along the ransomware.
The hackers stopped the attack after the authorities told them that their attack had actually shut down a hospital, while the university remained intact.
It has been for a long time that hospitals and other health care facilities are one of the biggest targets for cyberattacks.
Cybersecurity experts have warned for years that most hospitals and health facilities aren’t prepared. Many of them rely heavily on devices, like radiology equipment, that are often connected to the internet.
Without those tools, they cannot treat patients.
Even attacks that don't disrupt medical devices, can still hurt patients.
This is because cyberattacks can force hospitals and health facilities to divert many of their resources to respond to the attacks.
This can change how the doctors operate.
Days later the hospital's phone system was brought back online, but some other systems were still down.
This case is considered the first time that a human casualty has been linked to a ransomware attack.
It has been an incredibly grim possibility that cybersecurity experts have been warning about for quite some time.
When the news of the woman's death were published on the news, German authorities were still investigating the case.
If the ransomware attack, the hospital downtime, and the woman's diversion to another hospital are found to have been directly at fault for the woman's death, German police said it plans to turn their investigation into a murder case.
Even if the ransomware attack was a misfire, the attack has cost someone's life.
In a tweet, the hospital said that the cause was a vulnerability in a commercially-available software.
