A man in Germany, who needed immediate care, ended up being forced to go to a more remote hospital due to a ransomware attack.
On September 10, the University Hospital of Düsseldorf (UKD) in Germany was attacked by ransomware as the attackers took advantage of the vulnerability Citrix ADC CVE-2019-19781 .
By vacation of their IT systems, the hospital announced that planned and external treatments as well as emergency care cannot be performed. Those seeking emergency care were forced to move to more distant hospitals.
The hospital contacted the police and according to German media, the police contacted the ransomware operators via the instructions of the ransom note and informed them that the target was a hospital. As shown by the ransom note found on the hospital's encrypted disks, the ransomware targeted University Heinrich Heine, and not in the hospital itself.
Since the police contacted the blackmailers and explained that they had encrypted a hospital, the ransomware operators withdrew the ransom demand and handed over a decryption key.
Once the hospital received the key, it reset its systems and investigations concluded that the data they probably weren't stolen.
But until all this was done, a patient who rushed to Düsseldorf Hospital for urgent care was taken to the farthest hospital, about 32 miles (XNUMX km) away, in Wuppertal, as Düsseldorf University Hospital was unable to provide services.
This transport delayed receiving care for an hour, resulting in the patient's death. After the death of the patient, the German prosecutor's office began research as to whether this attack is liable and whether there is manslaughter.
