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"Two prominent hospitals were the victims of data breaching hackers in the last few days with each hospital having over 40,000 patients' personal information at risk. On Monday, Phetchabun Hospital had the personal data of 46,000 of their patients compromised while Bhumirajanagarindra Kidney Institute Hospital had the data from 40,000 patients stolen in parallel attacks."

"A month after a hospital in Hollywood was shut down by a ransomware infection that encrypted all the files on its computers and computer-controlled instruments and systems, another hospital, this one in Kentucky, has suffered a similar fate. "

"As hospitals face a surge in patients and critical equipment shortages stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, they are increasingly becoming the target of hackers who see health care facilities as easy prey. Ransomware attacks, in which hackers lock up a network and demand payment to return access to these systems, have presented a growing threat to hospitals since January. "

"Researcher Billy Rios (previously) has extended his work on vulnerabilities in hospital drug pumps, discovering a means by which their firmware can be remotely overwritten with new code that can result in lethal overdoses for patients. "

"A company owned by Google has been given access to the healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients from three hospitals run by a major London NHS trust. DeepMind, the tech giant's London-based company most famous for its innovative use of artificial intelligence, is being provided with the patient information as part of an agreement with the Royal Free NHS trust, which runs the Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals. It includes information about people who are HIV-positive as well as details of drug overdoses, abortions and patient data from the past five years, according to a report by the New Scientist."

"A major data breach at Phetchabun Hospital last week served as a loud wake-up call to state and private organisations to pay attention to their cybersecurity measures, as experts warned cybercrimes could become more commonplace in the years to come. The breach involved the data of 10,095 patients, including their names and dates of admission and discharge."

"Now, researchers from Incapsula have delved into the world of cut-rate DDoS providers, who market their services for $5 a pop on the website Fiverr. The DDoSers figleaf their offerings by calling them "stress testers" that website owners can use to determine whether their sites are configured to handle lots of traffic, but as the Incapsula team found, most will cheerfully attack sites other than your own (though one vendor said he wouldn't attack "government state websites, hospitals"). "

"The news of the breach comes after the collapse of a scheme under which the NHS would sell patient records to pharma companies, insurers and others (there was no easy way to opt out of the scheme, until members of the public created the independent Fax Your GP service). "

"The hackers who stole 4.5 million patient records from an American hospital network might have exploited the infamous Heartbleed bug to carry out the hack - the first time the bug has been reported to be at the center of a high-profile breach."

"Computer security experts suggested that the crisis could reflect weaknesses in the NHS's cybersecurity. Ross Anderson, of Cambridge University, said the attack appeared to exploit a weakness in Microsoft's software that was fixed by a "critical" software patch earlier this year but which may not have been installed across NHS computers."

"Sam Smith, of the health data privacy group MedConfidential, said: "This is an utterly appalling case. It's an individual problem that the doctor did this. But it's a systemic problem that they could do it, and that flaws in the way the NHS's data management systems work meant that any doctor can do something like this to any patient."