Cyber ​​attack on Israel; Admits to hacking 8 terabytes of Health Ministry data.

Cyber ​​attack on Israel; Admits to hacking 8 terabytes of Health Ministry data.

The Israeli Health Ministry has admitted to a massive breach, Hebrew media reported, after an Eastern European hacking group released some of the Israelis’ data and set a 72-hour deadline for $700,000.

After much back and forth, it was officially announced that the Shamir Medical Center (Asaf Hurfe) had been hacked, allegedly by a group of Eastern European hackers. The group threatened to release patient information if a ransom was not paid.

The Health Ministry, citing concerns about the data leak, explained that the hospital’s daily operations were continuing as usual, but acknowledged on Friday morning that a preliminary investigation had shown that emails sent to and from the hospital over the past week, including medical information, had been leaked, Ynet reported.

But Ynet revealed that it was informed that several central hospital systems, including Chameleon (a medical records system), were briefly disrupted during the attack.

The hackers may have exploited a vulnerability in the laptop of a support worker at a computer security firm. Chameleon, which has been shut down, is a medical records system that aggregates patients’ medical records and is used by several hospitals in Israel and some health insurance funds.