Hackers Attacks the Systems of Toyota and Melbourne Based Hospital

Cyber Ransom Attacks on the Rise, As Hackers Infiltrated the systems of Toyota and Melbourne Based Hospital 

In recent cyber-attack, hackers infiltrated the database of a major Melbourne hospital and car manufacturer Toyota Australia.

This was a deliberate, targeted and well-planned cyber-attack and the protected health information of 15,000 patients at a specialist cardiology unit at Melbourne’s Cabrini Hospital had been encrypted after a ransomware strike.

The protected medical files of all patient who visited the private Cabrini Hospital in Malvern, Melbourne are thought to have been left scrambled by the ransomware, with the only hope of recovery being a restoration from an unaffected backup (if available) or the submission of a ransom payment to the extortionists.

Melbourne Heart Group, which is based inside the hospital at Malvern, has not been able to access some of its patients’ medical data for as long as three weeks.

The ransomware-attack corrupted every single data available on the system and completely crippled its servers.

The group behind the data breach demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency for the alleged restoration of the files.

According to reports, the payment was made, however, some of the patient documents have been seriously corrupted and cannot be accessed.

As an investigation on the Melbourne Based Hospital attack continues and analysts scramble to gather enough evidence to confidently point the finger – North Korea or Russia are suspected but denies interference. 

February may be the shortest month, however, the reports say that Toyota Australia has been subject to an attempted cyber-attack lend further weight to arguments that the risk of data breaches has never been more severe.

In a statement published on the Toyota website and shared on its Facebook page, the car manufacturer has confirmed that it had suffered a malware attack at its facilities in Melbourne that knocked out its website and other communications.

"At this stage, we believe no private employee or customer information has been accessed."

"The threat is being managed by our IT department who is working closely with international cybersecurity experts to get systems up and running again," Toyota said in a statement.

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An attempted cyber-attack on Toyota Australia had impacted its operations worldwide, but the company says its dealer network still remains up and running.

Though, at this stage, Toyota Australia has not established whether it was ransomware that messed up its systems, nor has it specified the name of any malware that may have been involved.

If it was ransomware, however, then it’s possible that Toyota was not precisely targeted by criminals but instead was unlucky enough to find itself in the firing line as extortionists attempted to infect any organization or individual that happened to open a malicious junk attachment or click on a destructive URL's.

Conclusion

The cyber-attack was stealthy, even though if the immediate security measures were taken at the right time when an attack was ongoing, the security breach could have been stopped before it achieved its objectives.

This was not the first instances where Cyber-criminals targeted private organizations, and it will not be the last.

Nowadays, cyber attackers have learned to make their malware more adaptable, resilient and more destructive and continuously improving their arsenal by developing new skills to attack business groups and individuals. Common antivirus suite cannot guard you against all cyber threats at the same time.

Thus, we need to widely upgrade our cyber defense systems and practices to more effectively guard against cybersecurity threats, as well as to respond in a timely and robust manner to prevent any intrusion in the future.

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