Romanian police bust hackers allegedly plotting ransomware attacks on hospitals

The hackers reportedly planned to threaten hospitals with malware to protest Romania’s state of emergency amid COVID-19.

Romanian authorities said Friday they had disrupted a cybercriminal group that planned to conduct ransomware attacks on hospitals in the country.

The hackers intended to pose as government officials and send malicious emails to public health institutions that purported to contain information on the coronavirus, according to the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), one of Romania’s top law enforcement agencies. Such ransomware attacks could disrupt the IT systems of hospitals, DIICOT said.

But before that could happen, police and security officials said they searched the suspects’ properties in Romania and neighboring Moldova. All four suspects were arrested, ZDNet reported.

The hackers planned to threaten hospitals to protest Romania’s state of emergency, which has restricted public gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Romanian news outlet Stirile Pro Tv.

The threat of attacking hospitals would be a much more serious crime than the website defacements and other low-skill digital mischief usually associated with the Romanian hacking group, known as Pentaguard. According to Romanian authorities, the hackers sought to use ransomware related to Locky or Bad Rabbit, strains of code that originated in Eastern Europe and have plagued multiple organizations in recent years.

The incident in Romania is the latest example of how hackers have targeted health care organizations as coronavirus spreads around the world.

After unidentified hackers disrupted the IT systems of the Czech Republic’s second largest hospital in March, governments and international bodies warned of the threat to public health. Interpol said it had “detected a significant increase in the number of attempted ransomware attacks against key organizations and infrastructure engaged in the virus response.” Governments, including the U.S. and its allies, have condemned the cyberattacks on the health care sector, which have nonetheless continued.

Cybersecurity professionals around the world have responded by volunteering their time to try to fend off hacking against medical organizations.

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure