Russian hacktivists seem to have gotten busy again after several hospital websites in the US and the Netherlands were reportedly brought down by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
According to Atlas News, the University of Michigan Hospital and Stanford Health Care Center are among the facilities targeted in the current campaign, which has attacked a handful of hospitals in the United States.
The new wave of attacks was reportedly launched in response to President Biden’s decision to send dozens of Abrams tanks to support the war effort in Ukraine, with a Killnet-related Telegram page reported over the weekend. Lights up.
Separately, a hospital in the northern Dutch city of Groningen was also attacked by suspected Russian hacktivists, according to newswire ANP.
The website of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) is flooded with traffic, but it is believed there will be no impact on medical services.
“Sometimes it stops for a while and then starts again. It’s quiet at the moment, but I don’t know if it will really stop this time,” a hospital spokesperson told ANP.
It’s unclear if other Dutch hospitals were affected, but Z-CERT, the country’s healthcare computer emergency response team, believes the UMCG attack was due to Killnet.
The Netherlands does not agree to send tanks to Ukraine, as it does not currently own them outright, but leases equipment from Germany.However, earlier this month agreed to send Patriot missile defense system to a war-torn country.
Killnet has been a vocal supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, using DDoS attacks as its primary weapon to sabotage operations in allies. Last week he attacked several Lithuanian government websites, and last October he attacked her websites at more than ten US airports.
However, DDoS attacks are more of a minor irritation than a serious risk to operations for governments and large organizations. Of greater concern to the healthcare sector is the impact of Russia-based cybercriminals launching ransomware attacks.
