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A major hospital in the UK says a ransomware attack contributed to the death of a patient.
The June 2024 attack caused major disruptions at Synnovis, a local blood testing provider, forcing it to cancel or delay over 1,000 patient appointments and procedures. On Wednesday, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that “one patient sadly died unexpectedly during the cyber attack.”
“The patient safety incident investigation identified a number of contributing factors that led to the patient's death,” the hospital told Sky News. "This included a long wait for a blood test result due to the cyber attack impacting pathology services at the time.”
Details are scant due to patient confidentiality. But a year ago, the ransomware attack prevented local hospitals from accessing blood test results and performing blood transfusions, forcing medical staff to deplete universal blood supplies.
The Russian-speaking Qilin ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the attack, demanding $50 million from Synnovis to decrypt its computers. When the hospital didn't pay, the gang leaked nearly 400GB of stolen data, potentially exposing the confidential information of nearly a million people. In total, Qilin has been tied to over 500 attacks.
The incident shows that ransomware attacks have a human toll, even though they are focused on extorting victims for money. In 2020, a ransomware attack forced a hospital in Germany to shut down services. A woman in need of treatment was redirected to another hospital 20 miles away and later died.