Cyberattack on hospitals opens the door to possible digital scams

The Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia is currently working to mitigate the effects of the cyberattack that the Gold Dupont group launched against the Moisès Broggi de Sant Joan Despí, Dos de Maig de Barcelona and Creu Roja de l’Hospitalet hospitals and against a dozen healthcare centers of the Consorci Sanitari Integral (CSI) last Friday.

The ‘hackers’ posted on the dark internet. 52.5 Gb of documents of patients and healthcare personnel. The Agency assures that most of these files are “office automation files” and did not want to confirm if there was really documentation such as DNI of patients, clinical records or trials.

The computer aggression was of one type ‘ransomware’a method by which the cybercriminals hijack data or access to computers for the purpose of demanding payment of a economic ransom to free them. Gold Dupont has already claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. This type of hackers tend to act more against institutions than against individual users because they can demand a higher ransom. One company recently attacked was Ferrari. Facebook has also been attacked.

Cybercrime has become more professionalized in recent years and has become more prevalent. It is estimated that groups using ‘ransomwere’ would have earned more than €600 million by 2020. According to the 2022 Global Risks Report prepared by the World Economic Forum, cybersecurity breaches and the digital divide will be among the 10 most critical threats facing humanity in the next two years.

Attention to suspicious emails

The Government of the Generalitat has asked users to be on the alert in case they receive suspicious e-mails in the next few days.suspicious emails or messages. In fact, it is common that after the publication of ‘hacked’ data there are other criminals who use this information to try to defraud users. One of these techniques is the ‘phishing’: messages via email or SMS from a bank or a service company or similar in which we are asked to enter a link provided to us and we are asked to verify personal data, bank details or passwords. At first glance they look like reliable emails or messages, but they are fake web pages that imitate real pages and what they intend is to scam the recipient.

Some of the most famous cases of ‘phishing’ are the. SMS notifying the user that his or her card has been blocked, the message notifying the user that has won an ‘iPhone or the mail where the “Tax Agency'” states that it is supposedly going to refund money to the user.