German authorities last week disclosed that a ransomware attack on the University Hospital of Düsseldorf (UKD) caused a failure of IT systems, resulting in the death of a woman who had to be sent to another hospital that was 20 miles away.
The incident marks the first recorded casualty as a consequence of cyberattacks on critical healthcare facilities, which has ramped up in recent months.
The attack, which exploited a Citrix ADC CVE-2019-19781 vulnerability to cripple the hospital systems on September 10, is said to have been “misdirected” in that it was originally intended for Heinrich Heine University, according to an extortion note left by the perpetrators.
After law enforcement contacted the threat actors and informed them that they had encrypted a hospital, the operators behind the attack withdrew the ransom demand and provided the decryption key.
The case is currently being treated as a homicide, BBC News reported over the weekend.
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