N.J.’S Largest Hospital System Pays Up in Ransomware Attack

Re:N.J.’S Largest Hospital System Pays Up in Ransomware Attack by user5994461 on Monday December 16, 2019 @04:39PM (#21807543)

That makes me wonder whether the usual malware came from phishing or vulnerabilities.

If it's phishing, typical staff clicking suspicious emails and opening URLs and attachments, there isn't a lot the hospital can do to stop it. A bit of blocking around external emails and shady attachments will help, but people will still fall for it quite often.

If it's remote vulnerabilities, probably some unpatched systems, it's risky because that could parallelize the whole hospital anytime, but as long as the vulnerability is patched by the ransomware it's still cheaper than doing the maintenance.

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Re:N.J.’S Largest Hospital System Pays Up in Ransomware Attack by nradov on Monday December 16, 2019 @05:44PM (#21808276)

The impact of staff clicking suspicious emails can be almost entirely eliminated by severely restricting user permissions. Only a special set of administrator accounts should be allowed to execute untrusted binaries. Regular users can only run trusted whitelisted applications.

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