DEVELOPING: (ETH) – We are receiving reports that a major hospital has been struck by what appears to be one of the largest medical cyberattacks in the history of the United States.
The report from NBC indicates that computer systems for Universal Health Services, which is home to more than 400 locations, primarily in the U.S., reportedly began to fail over the weekend, resorting in some hospitals resorting to old school methods of filing patient information with pen and paper,
according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Universal Health Services has not immediately responded to requests for comment, but recently posted a statement on its website that its company-wide network “is currently offline, from an apparent IT security issue.
According to NBC, One person familiar with the company’s response efforts who was not authorized to speak to the press said that the attack “looks and smells like ransomware.” NBC went on to state: “One of the nurses, who works in a facility in North Dakota, said that computers slowed and then eventually simply would not turn on in the early hours of Sunday morning.
“As of this a.m., all the computers are down completely,” the nurse said. “Another registered nurse at a facility in Arizona who worked this weekend said, “the computer just started shutting down on its own.” “Our medication system is all online, so that’s been difficult,” the Arizona nurse said.
Meanwhile, Customers with AT&T in South Carolina reported massive phone and internet outages across the entire state with Downdetector.com, showed the entire state of South Carolina and parts of North Carolina and Georgia showing outages.
We are also receiving reports of Law enforcement agencies across the US reporting brief outages of their 911 systems on Monday night, and it was not immediately clear if there was a connection with a major Microsoft system outage. According to the report, Law enforcement agencies around the country, from Nevada to Pennsylvania and Arizona to Minnesota, tweeted that their 911 systems were down beginning sometime after 7 p.m. ET. Multiple reports indicated outages throughout Delaware and Ohio as well.
