“The care of patients is not endangered,” insisted the minister, specifying that patients coming under “severe technical platforms are redirected by the Samu to other hospitals”.
Same reassuring tone at the level of the management of the establishment where the situation is the same as the day before: the work is done “by hand, without the help of computers”. “We work in degraded mode, not for the patient, but for us,” she says.
Consultations and follow-ups in the day hospital remain scheduled, the activities of the operating theater are managed “case by case” and patients who come to the emergency room redirected to the on-call medical center whose consultation slots have been extended or to the other hospitals in the region, detailed the establishment on Tuesday.
“It’s a cyberattack as unfortunately there are in all establishments, (…) as there are regularly unfortunately. We will not give in”, regretted Mr. Braun, passing through Hérault at a monkeypox vaccination centre.
But “the hospital reacted extremely well, with the support of the ARS, the support of the ministry and the support of the interior forces to counter this attack”, continued the Minister of Health and Prevention. .
The South Francilien Hospital Center (CHSF) in Corbeil-Essonnes, south-east of Paris, has been the victim of a computer attack since the night of Saturday to Sunday around 01:00. A ransom demand of 10 million dollars, formulated in English, was demanded by the hacker(s).
Opened in 2012 and with a capacity of a thousand beds, the CHSF provides health coverage for a population of nearly 600,000 inhabitants of the outer suburbs.
– hackers “go fishing” –
A wave of cyberattacks has been targeting the French and European hospital sector for about two years. In 2021, the National Authority for the Security and Defense of Information Systems (Anssi) noted on average one incident of this type per week in a health establishment in France.
“Hackers have particularly wide targets, they go fishing. It is essentially the lure of profit that motivates them, even if some may also have ideological motivations, revenge,” the general told AFP. Christophe Husson, second in command of the Cyberspace Gendarmerie Command (ComCyberGend), recalling that the “global cost of cybercrime is estimated at 6 billion dollars per year”.
The purpose of the cybergendarmes’ investigation is to collect “digital evidence” to “identify the perpetrators, locate them and arrest them”. These investigations are “always very long, can last several months or even several years” and require significant international cooperation.
“No (hospital) establishment has paid and will not pay (ransom)”, indicated the director of the CHSF, because of its status as a public establishment, the attack therefore being a pure loss for cybercriminals.
To fight against the expanding phenomenon, the State devoted after the Covid-19 epidemic an envelope of 25 million euros to the cybersecurity of health establishments.
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