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NHS services across England have been hit by IT failure, believed to be caused by a large-scale cyber-attack.

 

Trusts and hospitals in London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire have been affected.

 

Some GP surgeries have had to shut down phone and IT systems while A&Es have told people not to attend unless it's a real emergency.

 

NHS England says it is aware of the issue and is looking into it.

 

Among those affected is the East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust which says it is experiencing problems with computers and phone systems.

 

It has postponed all non-urgent activity and is asking people not to come to A&E at the Lister Hospital in Stevenage.

 

IT specialists are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, a statement from the trust says.

 

Also affected is Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust which says it has shut down all of its IT systems following a "secure system attack".

 

A GP from a surgery in York said: "We received a call from York CCG [Clinical Commissioning Group] around an hour ago telling us to switch off all of our computers immediately.

 

"We have since remained open, and are dealing with things that can be dealt with in the meanwhile."

 

Meanwhile, Blackpool Hospitals NHS Trust has asked people not to attend A&E unless it was an emergency because of computer issues.

 

But the NHS in Wales said it had a separate IT system and had not been affected by the cyber attack.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39899646

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El Loro posted:
Baz posted:

I saw that By the way El Loro .....I had one of those scam phone HMRC calls today ....the recorded message one ....guess what ...they are going to sue me 

Yes, that's definitely a scam

Yes ....I checked it out on web......and apparently this particular recoded message one  is targeting  older people  ....to which my 74 year old husband quipped ..* well that lets me out * 

Baz
Last edited by Baz

A massive ransomware campaign appears to have attacked a number of organisations across Europe.

 

Screenshots of a well known program that locks computers and demands a payment in Bitcoin have been shared online by parties claiming to be affected.

 

There have been reports of infections in the UK, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine.

 

It is not yet clear whether the attacks are all connected.

 

One cyber-security researcher tweeted that he had detected 36,000 instances of the ransomware, called WannaCry and variants of that name.

 

"This is huge," he said.

 

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) was also hit by a ransomware attack and screenshots of the WannaCry program were shared by NHS staff.

 

It is not yet clear if the attacks are connected.

 

A number of Spanish firms were among the apparent victims elsewhere in Europe.

 

Telecoms giant Telefonica said in a statement that it was aware of a "cybersecurity incident" but that clients and services had not been affected.

 

Power firm Iberdrola and utility provider Gas Natural were also reported to have suffered from the outbreak.

 

There were reports that staff at the firms were told to turn off their computers.

El Loro
Baz posted:
El Loro posted:
Baz posted:

I saw that By the way El Loro .....I had one of those scam phone HMRC calls today ....the recorded message one ....guess what ...they are going to sue me 

Yes, that's definitely a scam

Yes ....I checked it out on web......and apparently this particular recoded message one  is targeting  older people  ....to which my 74 year old husband quipped ..* well that lets me out * 

 Flipping hell, what utter dirtbags they are Baz

Lucky you were cool calm and collected about it... and you and your hubby could even joke about it afterwards 

Roger the Alien

Reporting Scotland have just said that 6 Scottish Health Boards (NHS Lanarkshire being one of them) have reported that they have experienced some knock-on effects from the English NHS attacks.

 

Our office had some problems, but as they were much the same as what we often experience, we didn't do much more than shrug our shoulders. However, given what the news reports are saying, our problems today could well be because of these attacks and after effects!

Extremely Fluffy Fluffy Thing
Saint posted:

One ponders how on earth people coped before poota's were around.

 

Don't come into A&E unless it's a real emergency??

Can the NHS not fix a broken leg without a laptop???

The problem is that part of the point of moving to a digital system is so that you don't have the cost and hassle of maintaining paper data (patients' medical records, in this case). The downside of that is that if anything goes wrong, you can't restore those paper records easily, if at all.

 

And yes: doctors have been resorting to pen and paper during the current attack.

Eugene's Lair
Jen-Star posted:

Apparently It was down to a bug in window 10 that was patched in March, it would appear NHS and others affected didnt update and patch it... Or so I've just been told 

I'm not so sure about that, Jen. My understanding is that much of the NHS is still running XP.

 

From the Register article I quoted previously:

"The security hole has been patched for modern Windows versions, but not WindowsXP – and the NHS is a massive user of the legacy operating system."

 

Eugene's Lair
Last edited by Eugene's Lair
Eugene's Lair posted:
Jen-Star posted:

Apparently It was down to a bug in window 10 that was patched in March, it would appear NHS and others affected didnt update and patch it... Or so I've just been told 

I'm not so sure about that, Jen. My understanding is that much of the NHS is still running XP.

 

From the Register article I quoted previously:

"The security hole has been patched for modern Windows versions, but not WindowsXP – and the NHS is a massive user of the legacy operating system."

 

Ah yes, that makes sense. Mrjen just said it was the bug we patched in March so we're safe.... I made the rest up in my head ïŋ―ïŋ―

Jen-Star

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