Paralyzed by a cyberattack, the Corbeil-Essonnes Hospital Center will not pay a ransom

During the night from Saturday to Sunday, the South Ile-de-France Hospital Center was hit by a cyberattack, and the hackers are demanding a ransom of ten million dollars to restore the tools and software. On the management side, we chose not to give in to blackmail, even if this type of attack should ultimately cost the state several million euros.

Ten million dollars. This is the sum claimed by pirates from the management of the South Ile-de-France Hospital Center (CHSF), located in Corbeil-Essonnes. Since Sunday, the entire computer network has been paralyzed by a ransomware and, in the columns of log The ParisianMedhy Zeghouf, chairman of the supervisory board of the CHSF, warns that he will not put his hand in his pocket.

” A procedure was immediately put in place by the Regional Health Agency (ARS). This is not the first health facility attacked in this way. We will therefore be able to rely on what has already been done. In any case, it would be counterproductive to pay this ransom. This was already the choice made by the cities of Annecy and La Rochelle.

The choice not to give in to the blackmail of hackers will obviously complicate the restoration of the computer system. This can take several weeks, and currently this attack makes all software hospital professions, storage systems (particularly for medical imaging) and the information system relating to patient admissions. Overall, the entire technical platform is unavailable, we explain in a statementand we have to go back to the pen and the paper card for admissions.

The example of Dax hospital

Consequently, patients whose care requires access to the technical platform are transferred to other establishments in the network of public hospitals in Ile-de-France. Concerning people already hospitalized in the establishment, the crisis unit has put in place the necessary measures for their care. The objective is obviously that no patient dies because of this paralysis of the information services.

From an accounting point of view, and even without the ransom payment, this cyberattack will be very expensive. Thereby, the computer attack against the Dax hospital in 2021 had incurred costs estimated at 2.3 million euros. In February 2021, the management of the hospital center had also chosen not to pay a ransom, and Health ICT had detailed the costs generated by such an attack.

Supported by ARS Nouvelle Aquitaine, it was necessary to count on 174,000 euros in material investments to rebuild the network, 546,000 euros for cybersecurity services and relocations, but also and above all 1.48 million euros in terms of human with the reinforcements and overtime caused by malfunctions.

More and more cyberattacks in France

At the time, it had taken “months” for the service to work normally again… Unfortunately, the future remains bleak since the latest report from Avast mentionsa 42% increase in ransomware attacks in France. At the end of 2021, theNational Information Systems Security Agency (ANSSI) also revealed that the number of cyberattacks had quadrupled in one year, and that the health system was a prime target for hackers. Beyond the paralysis of information systems, there is the danger of leaking patient data. And unfortunately it has already happened.