Cyber Attack on NHS

What is that mollie?

Hospital and GP computer systems locked up, patients affected, systems down, tests interrupted, chaos...here, Spain, Italy and other places...

I wouldn't like to have the job of sorting the mess that's been caused by this .

Don't bring them before a judge, present the criminals to a bunch of NHS consultants and let them harvest their organs. Criminals like these do not deserve to walk the same earth

What chaos!

It is absolutely bloody appalling

harrigran I like your thinking

I do think that governments have not even begun to get a grip of this problem. The potential is to horrible to think about

It is horrible. It's to be hoped the data is all backed up regularly, and can be quickly restored. Though even a few hour's loss of data will cause major problems.

hours'

Nightmare, just shows how dependent we are on technology now,
As usual they are saying NHS has not spent enough updating and protecting systems. There is so much needed to make the NHS fully functional.

Good thinking harrigran

Don't bring them before a judge, present the criminals to a bunch of NHS consultants and let them harvest their organs.

That would be sweet revenge, wouldn't it? Though I'm not sure I'd want one of their hearts beating in my chest...

I think I just heard that they were not backed up.

I feel evil about whoever did this. It's placed lives at risk, operations have been cancelled, appointments too! the impact could have horrific consequences.

I was at the doctors this afternoon and either their system wasn't affected or I was in just in time.

It would not surprise me to find a foreign government behind these attacks. Such a huge international hit requires a bit mor than a network of hackers. I suggest Russia, North Korea or China in that order, are probably behind this attack.

In so many countries though now, perhaps a small group of hackers?Or even just one very dedicated one with all day on his hands.

I am not sure. To coordinate simultaneous attacks on key computer systems in 74 countries requires more than one group of hackers working on their own.

Perhaps hackers get together on these kind of things Monica

I'm not sure, hackers never strike me as being very clubbable, always wanting to be one up on everyone else. You rarely see groups of hackers being brought up in court, just rather sad, pathetic individuals.

However.I feel sure something like this would be well within the capacity of GHQ, for example, so I think, therefore that the size and distribution of this attack suggests that a country with a well developed cyber war capacity is behind it.

I do feel that organisations like the NHS haven't really got the hang of cyber security yet. They are always being warned about how out of date some of their systems are. Hopefully this is just low lifes wanting to cause trouble, but think what an enemy government could do.

As a very lowly pen pusher in the NHS I got an early finish today!!!?

At the Royal Free with DH late yesterday afternoon for his echocardiogram and relieved it was apparently unaffected because a wasted 1 1/2 hour (taxi) journey each way would have been an expensive annoyance. His blood transfusion at MKH in the morning also fortunately unaffected.
On a serious level though, this is appalling , how vulnerable are we?