After the establishments of Dax, Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Villefranche-sur-Saône, and even the hospitals of Paris in the midst of a pandemic, it is the turn of the hospital of Saint-Gaudens (Haute-Garonne) to be a victim a cyberattack, resulting in the shutdown of its IT departments.
Patient care continues, however, management said.
Thursday at around four in the morning, the computer attack infected the servers of the hospital center, "with a message asking to pay a ransom in Bitcoin", specifies the prosecutor of Saint-Gaudens, Christophe Amunzateguy.
“From Thursday morning, we decided to shut down the servers, to prevent the spread of the computer virus,” explains Stéphanie Baux, director of economic services and logistics.
“We have stopped all the computing and telephony, which are connected, so all the computers are off now.
“Since then, telephony has been brought back into service, but not computers.
Main consequence: “Everything is much longer”.
Despite the shutdown of the servers, the care of patients continues, ensures the hospital, but the administrative services work in writing.
"When we need a result from a lab, it will arrive by fax or in writing," continues the management.
Patients referred to other hospitals
For the time being, the hospital is asking Samu to redirect patients to other hospital structures, while the cyberattack is under control.
"The situation will last beyond the weekend because a precise analysis must be made of all our computer stations, all our servers, and a safe restart be carried out," explains Stéphanie Baux.
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The Saint-Gaudens hospital has filed a complaint which will be forwarded "to the Paris prosecutor's office, which has a section specializing in cyberattacks," said prosecutor Amunzateguy.
This computer ransomware attack echoes the one suffered by the hospital in Dax (Landes) in February, which had also disrupted its functioning.
The establishment had not paid the requested ransom.
On March 31, another cyberattack targeting the Pierre Fabre group, based in the Tarn, caused the shutdown of a large part of pharmaceutical and cosmetic production.
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This is the fourth hospital attack in two months in France.
At the head of the European heavyweight Orange Cyberdéfense, Michel Van Den Berghe explained to the Parisian: “All the hospitals that have not yet been affected are potential targets.
Health establishments or town halls are not more targeted than the others, but they are people who do not have the financial and human resources or for whom it is not the job to do IT security.
They are easier targets to attack ”.
In February, Emmanuel Macron released one billion euros to strengthen national cybersecurity.
