N.Korean Hackers Target US Health Providers With Ransomware
North Korea-sponsored hackers have been targeting the healthcare and public health sector in the US for more than a year, according to a July 6 alert from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI and the Department of the Treasury.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently released a new advisory that suggests nation-state threat actors are leveraging the Maui ransomware to target organisations in the healthcare sector.
According to the document the threat actors have been engaging in these campaigns since at least May 2021.
“North Korean state-sponsored cyber actors used Maui ransomware in these incidents to encrypt servers responsible for healthcare services – including electronic health records services, diagnostics services, imaging services and intranet services,” says the release. “The FBI, CISA, and Treasury highly discourage paying ransoms as doing so does not guarantee files and records will be recovered and may pose sanctions risks... In some cases, these incidents disrupted the services provided by the targeted HPH Sector organisations for prolonged periods.”
In particular, the US government agency believes that the nation-state hacking group is sponsored by the North Korean government.
The CISA document explains that intelligence obtained by the CISA, the FBI, and the Department of the Treasury, indicates that the threat actors have been conducting the campaigns since May or 2021. CISA says that the ransomware was designed for manual execution by a remote actor, in this case located in North Korea. In addition, it deploys a combination of Advanced Encryption Standard, RSA, and XOR encryption to encrypt the files and damage the target’s network. The authentication allocated to any given user dictates how much damage the hacker will be able to inflict.
The US security agencies recommend that companies in the healthcare industry take a strict zero-trust approach.
The FBI is seeking any information that can be shared, to include boundary logs showing communication to and from foreign IP addresses, bitcoin wallet information, the decryptor file, or benign samples of encrypted files.
“As stated above, the FBI discourages paying ransoms. Payment does not guarantee files will be recovered and may embolden adversaries to target additional organisations, encourage other criminal actors to engage in the distribution of ransomware, and/or fund illicit activities.
Regardless of whether victim organisations have decided to pay the ransom, the FBI, CISA, and Treasury urge them to promptly report ransomware incidents to the FBI.
The US government’s latest warning follows a sequence of high-profile cyber attacks targeting healthcare organisations. University Medical Center Southern Nevada was hacked by ransomware in August 2021 that compromised files containing protected health information and Boston Children's hospital suffered a breach to its systems in June.
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