3 NHS hospitals under the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust have been infected by "a virus" that administrators detected on Sunday; the hospitals are on limited operations and turning away patients until the hospitals can "isolate and destroy" the malware.
The hospitals have not disclosed what kind of malware has hit their systems. Earlier this year a rash of ransomware attacks shut down hospitals across the USA, with the prospect of more to come.
Hospitals are computers we put sick people into. And yet the UK government continues to treat computers as though the most salient fact about them is that they can be used to recruit ISIS fighters, and to demand that their security be deliberately weakened to help disrupt terrorism — even if that weak security will expose hospitals and other critical systems to this sort of attack.
It's past time that we realised that there is no internet policy: only policy.
The NHS Trust hasn't provided specific information about the sort of virus or malware which has infected its systems — or how it managed to breach any defenses.
The hospital says that from Wednesday appointments in some areas — audiology psiological measurement, antenatal, community and therapy, chemotherapy, paediatrics, and gynaecology — will be going ahead and it will be contacting patients who are able to be seen.
Computer virus attack forces hospitals to cancel operations, shut down systems
[Danny Palmer/Zdnet]
(via /.)
