Minister for Communications & Transport Eamon Ryan described as “credible” a report in the Financial Times that patient data stolen from the HSE has appeared online. According to the newspaper a group calling itself the ‘ContiLocker Team’ shared 27 business and patient files relating to 12 individuals with an unknown user in a chat. The files had allegedly been available for some days
Conti is the ransomware used in the attack on the HSE and is associated with the hacker group Wizard Spider, based in either Eastern Europe or Russia. The group has demanded a ransom of $19.99 million from the Irish government to restore access to affected hardware and not to make the alleged 700GB of data it has stolen public.
The Government has said it will not negotiate with the hackers and is instead devoting resources to restoring the 2,000 HSE systems affected by the attack – a process that could take months to complete at an estimated cost of tens of millions of euro.
“We expected this sort of thing to happen, these sort of sites to be used and this information to be shared, that is very standard for what these criminal gangs do,” said Minister Ryan on Morning Ireland.
In the meantime hospitals are reverting to paper-based systems and cancelling appointments, with radiology services such as X-Rays and CAT scans particularly affected.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly described the hack as “heartbreaking” for patients and “an attack on the people of Ireland”.
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