Mayanei HaYeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak which serves the Haredi community became the victim of a ransomware attack overnight Tuesday. The medical center’s administrative computer systems have been encrypted and the attackers are demanding payment to release them. It is believed the hackers were able to access the personal information of patients, which is backed up, but restoring the system will take days.
For the time being, the medical center disabled its computer system and switched to manual communication to ensure that the damage from the attack is not aggravated and to enable a thorough examination of its sources.
The National Cyber System said that although the hospital’s computer systems were disabled, medical equipment was not damaged. Health Ministry and National Cyber System teams are at the hospital to help deal with the attack.
Mayanei HaYeshua Director Dr. Dorit Tekes-Manova on Tuesday morning said “No harm was caused to the treatment of hospitalized patients. However, patients who were invited for elective examinations, the outpatient clinics, as well patients seeking treatment at the hospital’s emergency room, are asked not to come at this time until things are clarified.”
The health sector in Israel experiences 810 cyber-attacks on average every week, making it one of the top targets of cyber-attacks in the country. Around the world, there has been a 30% increase in weekly attacks on healthcare organizations.
In October 2021, Hillel Yaffe Hospital in Hadera suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted non-urgent treatments and forced medical employees to switch to manual communications that included printing patients’ medical files. The hackers demanded, and probably received, a surprisingly small amount, but the powers that be, to this day, deny that they capitulated to terrorists.
