Le Figaro Nantes
The Nantes University Hospital was plagued by a cyberattack for many hours, Le Figaro learned on Tuesday, confirming a report by Presse Océan. "No internal intrusion or data compromise was found," the institution said at 15:40 p.m., when the hack had just ended.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, the hospital was hit by a "distributed denial of service attack, which consists of sending a very high volume of traffic to the intended target to overwhelm the servers, destabilize the network and thus cause a loss of service." The digital services departments then "interrupted the internet connection in order to protect the infrastructure and data of the University Hospital", causing IT inconveniences.
It was temporarily impossible to make an appointment online because the website was no longer accessible. Employees were unable to send or receive emails to and from the outside. Finally, access to the CHU's tools was no longer possible remotely. Employees have been alerted to the evolving situation internally.
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'Recurrent' IT failures
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We are worried about the recurrent outages and cyberattacks that are multiplying. We hope that our management will provide the means for the digital service to keep the hospital running," said the FO union at Nantes University Hospital. "There are always attempts. The park is relatively ageing," adds the CGT.
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The public hospital is regularly a prime target for hackers: the data it holds is vital and complex and can bring in a lot of money for hackers (ransom demands, resale on the darknet, etc.), while cyber teams do their best, for the good of patients," comments Pierre-Alban Maurin, head of the cybersecurity department at TMG, a Nantes-based company specialising in IT security and security. cyber surveillance. Also, "this type of structure is complicated to secure, because it must not experience any downtime in its operation and suffers from constrained budgets". In June, Rennes University Hospital was also targeted. In October, it was the turn of the hospitals of Vittel and Neufchâteau (Vosges).
In Nantes, "the restoration of internet connection and services is underway". It could take a day or two to get back to normal.