Ransomware attacks aren’t new, and generally speaking they’re not exactly life-threatening attacks either as the attacks are basically meant to encrypt the data on a computer and hold it hostage, only providing the victims with the decryption key once a ransom has been paid (hence the name).
However, it appears that over in Germany, it is possible that a patient at a hospital might have died as a result of the hospital being hit with ransomware. This makes it possibly the first known case ever of a life being lost as a result of a hack. According to the report, the Düsseldorf University Hospital was hit with a ransomware attack on the 9th of September where it scrambled the hospital’s data and made it inaccessible.
The patient who was at the hospital was said to have been scheduled for a life-saving treatment but as a result of the attack was sent to another hospital in Wuppertal that was roughly 30km away from the current hospital. It is unclear how the patient died, but investigators are now looking into the incident to determine whether or not there was a link between the hack and the patient’s death.
The report goes on to state that apparently the hackers did not intend to target this particular hospital and were trying to target a different university. They were also said to have provided the hospital the decryption key for free and disappeared after realizing their mistake.