The Brest hospital center was the object of a cyberattack that interrupted its operation without affecting the emergency service or causing a leak of health data, the CHU management announced this Friday.
“On Thursday, March 9 at 8:33 p.m., the Brest University Hospital was the object of an intrusion into its information system. The analysis of the attack process showed that the servers were affected,” says the Regional University Hospital Center (CHRU) of Brest in a press release. “As soon as this cyberattack was reported, the CHU implemented the necessary precautionary measures” and “a degraded mode of operation was launched” to ensure business continuity.
Thus, the Internet information system has been “isolated” to “limit the spread of the attack” and, therefore, all the CHRU’s communications with the outside (scheduling appointments, sending results, connections with other establishments, etc.) they are interrupted.
“At this stage, there are no data leaks”
But “emergency services are provided” and “no deprogramming is foreseen”, stresses the hospital, which can be contacted by telephone at the usual number. “At this stage, no health data leak has been identified. No data is compromised internally,” adds the establishment, which has filed a complaint with the police.
The Brest CHRU covers a territory comprising a population of 1.2 million and employing more than 6,500 people. Several French hospitals have been the target of cyberattacks in recent months, such as the Versailles hospital in December 2022 or the Sud Francilien Hospital Center (CHSF) in Corbeil-Essonnes at the end of August.
No details were released about the type of cyberattack targeting the CHRU in Brest, but in the case of the Versailles hospital, the hackers had used Lockbit ransomware (“ransomware”) and demanded a ransom to unlock the encrypted data.
In France, public establishments never pay ransoms because the law prohibits them from doing so.
Source: BFM TV
