Cyberattacks take down Canadian medical software provider, China's Wuhan earthquake monitoring service

Ionut Arghire
Security Week
Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:00 UTC

© AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

FILE PHOTO

Canadian heart monitoring and medical electrocardiogram solutions provider CardioComm this week announced it has taken systems offline following a cyberattack.

The attack, the company says, impacted its production server environments and has an impact on its business operations. Visitors to the company's website are informed that CardioComm services are currently offline.

"CardioComm's business operations will be impacted for several days and potentially longer depending how quickly the company is able to restore its data and re-establishes its production server environments," the company announced.

According to CardioComm, it has no evidence that customer health information was compromised in the attack, mainly because its software runs on each client's systems.

"Further, CardioComm does not collect patient health information from its clients. The company has initiated identity theft precautions should any employee personal information have been compromised to minimize the impact on its staff," CardioComm said.

The incident, the company noted, might also impact its ability to finalize required filings in response to a Cease Trade Order issued by the Ontario Securities Commission, which resulted in the suspension of its shares trading, imposed by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Although CardioComm did not share details on the type of cyberattack it fell victim to, it is possible that ransomware might have been involved. Typical incident response in the event of a ransomware attack involves taking systems offline to contain the incident.

CardioComm provides hospital, physician, and consumer device software for recording, analyzing, and managing electrocardiograms for the diagnosis of cardiac patients.

Comment: Reuters reported on July 26th:

China says Wuhan earthquake centre attacked by overseas hackers

An earthquake monitoring centre in central China's Wuhan suffered a cyberattack from overseas hackers, local authorities said on Wednesday.

China's state media, including Global Times and a social media account run by CCTV, claimed the attack was "government-backed" and came from the United States.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing didn't immediately reply to a Reuters' request for comments.

The Wuhan Municipal Emergency Management Bureau said in a statement that some network equipment at the Wuhan Earthquake Monitoring Center was under a cyberattack by an overseas organisation, but didn't specify the time of the attack.

A backdoor program, capable of controlling and stealing seismic activity data, was inserted in the equipment, according to China Daily.

China's foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying the "irresponsible" act has threatened China's national security.

"China will take necessary measures to safeguard its cyber security," spokesperson Mao Ning said at the ministry's regular press conference.

Microsoft (MSFT.O) earlier this month said Chinese hackers had breached senior U.S. officials' emails, a claim which Beijing refuted, calling it "disinformation."

Just a few days earlier: Norway's government ministries hit by 'extremely serious' cyber attack