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After injecting cancer hospital with ransomware, crims threaten to swat patients
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Extortionists are now threatening to swat hospital patients — calling in bomb threats or other bogus reports to the police so heavily armed cops show up at victims' homes — if the medical centers don't pay the crooks' ransom demands.
After intruders broke into Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center's IT network in November and stole medical records – everything from Social Security numbers to diagnoses and lab results – miscreants threatened to turn on the patients themselves directly.
"Ransoms have been allowed to reach lottery jackpot levels, and the predictable upshot is that people are willing to use more and more extreme measures to collect a payout," Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow told The Register.
Earlier this week, the security shop called for a complete ban on ransom payments, noting that extortion tactics were becoming more extreme and now include swatting threats.
Sam Rubin, VP of Unit 42 Consulting at Palo Alto Networks, told The Register his team hadn't seen any swatting attempts by extortion crews in 2023, though the shift in tactics seems likely.
The consulting and incident response unit has also witnessed miscreants sending flowers to a victim company's executive team, and issuing ransom demands via printers connected to the affected firm's network.
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