Cyber Attack on NHS

RAF, does it need to be microsoft?

No doubt the remoaners will blame Brexit.

... and then they wonder why patients don't want their health records online to share with drug companies etc.
Very occasionally hackers want to make a point - in this case it was (is?) downright dangerous - if ever caught, they should throw the book at them!

And that would make you happy, would it, shw? Seems a bit silly considering it's world-wide. You really can't blame remoaners for everything.

How can you stop people opening links in emails from people they don't know, thus having their computers (personal or work ones) infected with who knows what viruses?

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/13/jeremy-hunt-ignored-warning-signs-before-cyber-attack-hit-nhs

I blame Jeremy Hunt.

Sorry, meant to add that when I worked in the NHS we were constantly being warned about doing that.

I second that harrigran

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/13/nhs-computer-systems-insufficient-funding

What should we do to the government who knew it could happen and stopped the funding?

Possibly the same as the other 73 affected countries will do?

I thought I was joking about nuclear weapons.

www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a19061/britains-doomsday-subs-run-windows-xp/

Can't do anything about the other 73 countries.
We can do something about ours. I thought Maybot kept telling us we were world leaders. We have spent over £11 billion updating IT systems in the NHS.

Not exactly an underspend then was it? But, considering that, when the Labour party left office in 2011, they left any successive government with a £60 billion bill to pick up due to the overspending on the NHS during their tenure. If the cyber attack (and that's what this OP is actually about, not the labour party or any other political party) had happened just in the UK, I could possibly agree that their had been some malfeasance, and therefore governmental culpability. But it wasn't. It is a global attack.

Nobody seems to be asking what the purpose of this cyber attack might be - who might benefit from it.

The NHS is already on its knees and something like this - particularly if it recurs - could push it over the edge. Health insurance schemes in other countries that are government regulated/part financed could also be at risk of collapsing.

That's a good point Eloethan, countries like the US, that rely almost solely on private health insurance, will be crippled. Large corporations like FedEx have also been affected and so could, in turn, lose business; revenue, and then jobs.

I have suggested that it was a fishing expedition to find out if they could attack windows XP, and that there are lots of other government systems run on the same windowsXP, including our nuclear arms.
Ostensibly it was to blackmail companies. The NHS is the third largest company in the world.
Hopefully the government did not cut the money to patch the nuclear arms system like it deliberately did for the NHS.

This is not Brexit. IMO, this is to test a trojan horse, go worldwide and bring on collapse.

"This is the largest such strike on the NHS but it is not the first. There’ll be an inquest this weekend among Britain’s cyber spooks. (GCHQ published an unfortunately timed limerick on social media yesterday, as the attack unfolded.)

The National Cyber Security Centre and NHS Digital must act urgently to address NHS cyber security – starting with replacing obsolete, unsupported systems (Windows XP!!) – before patient data is compromised."

From the i.

Anyone know what the limerick was?

Just heard a poor chap on the radio. He was actually in the MRI scanner, and after about ten minutes it stopped because of the cyber attack. Poor chap went though all that worry leading up to it, and now he is none the wider, and will have to do it all again.

I bet there are thousands of similar cases, it beggers belief

Must have been something very serious, too, to have been in an MRI machine for that long.

MRI scans typically take twenty to thirty minutes, having waited weeks for an appointment the poor man was probably less than impressed.

Oh dear they are warning that a second cyber attack is possible on Monday when computers are turned on again! The world is getting a scary place for sure!'

All they've got to do is close down electrical supply and the whole world is b......d

Except because of the danger of a surge in wind power bringing the whole National Grid down, in this country there is a robust grid recovery system, based on diesel generators at key locations round the country that can start up as soon as the grid collapse happens and get it up and running again.

Eloethan says, "Nobody seems to be asking what the purpose of this cyber attack might be - who might benefit from it." but if they get $300 from each firm whose files they have locked up, that will add up. Many firms will just pay up to avoid the loss of confidence in their business.

There is no need for anything to be involved more sinister than old-fashioned money, along with the immature satisfaction of having outwitted security precautions.

Don't all hospitals have their own generators?
Could they not switch the computers on off-grid and patch the XP system?