- The New York Blood Center announces that it was struck by a ransomware attack
- He informed the police, but said that his operations were hampered
- No details on attackers or the consequences
One of the largest independent and community blood centers in the world has undergone a ransomware attack which has paralyzed its operations.
In a public announcement, the New York Blood Center (NYBC) said that it was working on the restoration of its systems and had informed the attack police.
“On Sunday, January 26, New York Blood Center Enterprises and its operational divisions identified a suspicious activity affecting our computer systems. We immediately initiated third -party experts in cybersecurity to investigate and confirmed that suspicious activity is the result of a ransomware incident, “said the announcement. “We have taken immediate measures to help contain the threat and we work with these experts with these experts to restore our systems as quickly and as safe as possible.”
Blood companies in the reticle
Other details are not known at the moment. We do not know who are the threat actors, nor how they have managed to access NYBC’s computer infrastructure. Since ransomware attackers generally steal sensitive information, it is prudent to assume that the same thing has happened here. However, we do not know how many people are affected, or what type of information could have been stolen.
NYBC serves more than 75 million people in the United States. Each year, it collects around 400,000 blood donations and distributes more than a million blood units and blood components to nearly 200 hospitals. Therefore, the number of potentially affected people could be large enough and stolen information could be sensitive.
Blood donation companies seem to be in the reticle these days. Earlier this month, the news announced that OneBlood, a crucial non-profit medical organization for health companies through the southeast of the United States, has lost sensitive information in a ransomware attack which occurred last summer.
This decision disrupted the services in several American states, the organization operating to “considerably reduced capacity”.
