Cyber-attacks on healthcare indicate criminals never let go of opportunity

The global novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic that has afflicted the world since the start of the year have resulted in a lot of changes in the way we live, work and play and this will have long-term ramifications even after the pandemic is tamed.

The social distancing norms and lockdowns across the world, triggered by Covid-19 have speeded up digitalisation of both our personal and professional lives by, some estimates, five years. Remote working, education, tele-medicine and online shopping have become main stream. The downside to this digitalisation has been the increased threat of cyberattacks.

As more people and organisations move online, criminals and malicious actors, often state-backed, have stepped up attacks sensing an opportunity – to use a bit of a hyperbole, like a pack of sharks they have smelled blood. It is unfortunate that while the whole world has gone into, what can be termed as a collective pause in economic activity, cybercriminals have stepped up their game.

The global healthcare system has borne the brunt of increased cyberattacks. This has resulted in a double whammy for the sector. The medical emergency has been testing the limits of the healthcare system around the world and what it did not need was the added headache of cyberattacks. With the global focus on healthcare, including frantic efforts to find a virus or a reliable treatment regime for Covid-19, malicious actors have launched a targeted campaign of phishing, ransomware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) on already stretched healthcare organisations.

Hundreds of attempts have been made over the past 10 months to compromise healthcare systems around the world and many did not even make it to the news flow. Among the major ones that have grabbed the headlines is the attack on the Czech Republic’s Brno University Hospital in March.

The organisation runs one of the largest Covid-19 testing facilities in the country and it was hit by a ransomware attack that caused an immediate computer shutdown, paralysing the functioning of the institute. Around the same time, there was an unsuccessful cyberattack attempt at the Paris hospital authority AP-HP, (Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris) and a massive email campaign targeting healthcare workers in Spain.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the top US health agency charged with responding to Covid-19, also suffered what in later analysis, proved to be an attempted distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that sought to overload the agency’s servers.

Izumi Nakamitsu, United Nations Under-Secretary-General of Disarmament Affairs, has noted that the World Health Organisation, (WHO), has experienced more than five times the number of cyberattacks than in the corresponding period last year. “This has compounded people’s already widespread sense of insecurity,” she added.

Attacks not new

Complications in security

Data security is complicated by the fact that governments, biotechnology companies, researchers and pharmaceutical manufacturers have been working remotely, many on private home networks, due to lockdowns and social distancing norms. Most security networks are only as strong as its most vulnerable point and all it takes is for one compromised system to grant access to a determined and skilled malicious hacker group. Scientific research, like the development of a Covid-19 vaccine, requires collaboration and open sharing of information among researchers. Doing this over dispersed networks makes it harder to protect the network from threat actors.

There have not just attempts to steal confidential data on work being done to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Malware campaigns have also been launched to exploit the interest in the progress in the development of vaccines with phishing attacks. According to Check Point Software cybercriminals have used the race to develop a vaccine to start malware campaigns by sending executable files in emails with headers related to “Covid-19 vaccines”.

These files, if downloaded by recipients interested in knowing more about the vaccine, install what is known as an InfoStealer that is capable of gathering information, such as login information, usernames and passwords from the infected computer. In Singapore, and Southeast Asia, like other parts of the world, there have been a spike in phishing and ransomware attacks, and these have also used the Covid-19 hook.

It’s not just the healthcare sector that has been affected. The rapid and largescale adoption of digital technology that the global pandemic has transformed the way we do business and has triggered an increased dependency on Information and Communications Technology (ICT). This has expanded the attack surface that could be exploited by malicious actors. Reports by the UN have indicated that spear-phishing attacks have risen 667 per cent during the initial peak of the global pandemic.

What can be done?