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Wrongful homicide investigation
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Hackers blackmail Düsseldorf University Clinic: woman dies after being treated too late
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The university clinic in Düsseldorf was attacked by hackers.
Photo: dpa / Roland Weihrauch
Düsseldorf According to the state government, the IT failure at the Düsseldorf University Hospital is due to an attack by blackmail hackers. Now there is also a wrongful death investigation, as a patient passed away after treatment delays.
According to expert analysis, the background to the flaw is a hacker attack that exploited a vulnerability in an application, as the university clinic announced on Thursday. However, he is also now being investigated for wrongful death. According to the report of the NRW Minister of Justice, a patient died who had to be transferred to a more distant hospital in Wuppertal due to the attack on the clinic’s servers.
On Thursday, September 10, the computer system of the largest hospital in Düsseldorf had largely failed. Hundreds of operations and treatments have already been canceled due to failure. In addition, the hospital is still discharged from emergency care, so the emergency services do not approach it.
Science Minister Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen (independent) said in state parliament that the perpetrators had withdrawn the extortion after contacting the police. The university clinic announced that the security flaw that the hackers exploited was in a worldwide standard commercial add-on software. In the amount of time the software company needed to close the gap, the perpetrators penetrated the systems. As a result, systems gradually failed and stored data could no longer be accessed, the clinic reports.
IT experts have now been able to restore access to the data. So far there is no evidence that the data has been irretrievably destroyed. So far, no evidence of data-specific fishing has been found.
The university clinic hopes it will take some time before patients can be treated normally again. “Due to the size of the IT system and the large amount of data, we cannot yet estimate when this process will be completed,” said Commercial Director Ekkehard Zimmer. “However, we are confident that we will be able to better estimate the time span in the next few days and that we will be there for our patients again step by step.”
After several hacker attacks on clinics in North Rhine-Westphalia, the CDU / FDP state government wants to provide more money for the security of computer systems in the future. NRW is expected to receive funding of 900 million euros from the future 2020/21 law from federal and state hospitals, of which 630 million from federal funds. Science Minister Pfeiffer-Poensgen said that.
At least 15 percent of these funds should go to IT security. All hospitals must receive funding regardless of the number of patients. The app seesThe journey has not yet begun. The CDU / FDP state government has been providing two million euros for the computer security of each university clinic since 2018, the minister said. “That is not enough, we will work on it.”
According to the Greens, the reason for the clinics’ susceptibility to hacker attacks is not just a lack of money. “Strong legal standards” are also needed, said green politician Matthi Bolte-Richter in today’s state parliament hour about the hackers’ attack on the university clinic.
The federal government must establish clear guidelines here. Many universities and clinics do not yet have a full-time IT security officer.
In addition to the university clinic in Düsseldorf, the Lukas hospital in Neuss, the Jülich research center and several companies have been targeted by hackers in the past.
