CommonSpirit hospital chains hit by ransomware, patients are facing problems

CommonSpirit, one of the largest hospital chains in the US, suffered a ransomware cyberattack that impacted its operations.

Common Spirit, one of the largest hospital chains in the US, this week suffered a ransomware cyberattack that caused severe inconvenience to the facilities and to patients

The alleged security breach led to delayed surgeries, hold-ups in patient care and forced the chain to reschedule doctor appointments across the country.

“CommonSpirit Health has identified an IT security issue that is impacting some of our facilities. We have taken certain systems offline. We are continuing to investigate this issue and follow existing protocols for system outages.” reads the statement published by the company.

CommonSpirit Health confirmed it had experienced an IT security issue that forced it to take part of its infrastructure offline.

“We are grateful to our staff and physicians, who are doing everything possible to minimize the impact to our patients.” continues the statement.“We take our responsibility to our patients very seriously and apologize for any inconvenience.”

NBC News, citing a person familiar with its remediation efforts, revealed that the organization suffered a ransomware attack.

“While CommonSpirit declined to share specifics, a person familiar with its remediation efforts confirmed to NBC News that it had sustained a ransomware attack.” reported NBC News.

NBC News added that multiple facilities have been impacted the ransomware attacks. The media reported that CHI Memorial Hospital (Tennessee), some St. Luke’s hospitals (Texas), and Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (Seattle) were impacted.

CommonSpirit did not share details about the problems its hospitals are facing across the country.

At this time, none of the ransomware gangs claimed responsibility for the attack. It is unclear if the threat actors have stolen data from the infrastructure of the hotel chain.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CommonSpirit)

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