The news at large this week has understandably focused on the new coronavirus that continues to spread throughout the world. It’s slowly seeping into the world of cybersecurity as well, as hackers and scammers take advantage of confusion, anxiety, and lax work-from-home setups to stir up trouble.
Ransomware Operators Pledge Not to Hit Hospitals for Now
Well, this is … nice? It’s definitely something. BleepingComputer reached out to the operators of multiple strains of ransomware, asking if they had plans to stop hitting hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic. Two of them actually wrote back to say yes, absolutely, they’ll take it easy on the health care industry (except pharmaceutical companies) until the Covid-19 situation improves. Please take this with gigantic boulders of salt, especially given that ransomware attackers historically love to go after hospitals. And even if the proprietors of DoppelPaymer and Maze—the two who responded to BleepingComputer–do keep to their word, lots of prolific ransomware remains in play. In fact, hackers hit a Czech hospital earlier this week.
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