Russian hackers were allegedly behind a cyberattack that took down 14 hospital systems websites across the country Monday, including Duke University Hospital in Durham.
According to DailyMail, Killnet, a pro-Russia group, has taken responsibility. Duke, Stanford Healthcare and Cedars-Sinai in California, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Jefferson Health, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania were among those affected. Their websites have since been restored.
Duke Health officials emailed the following statement to Carolina Journal:
“Duke Health has experienced some intermittent issues with its public website, but it remains unclear what caused the brief disruptions. Technical teams are engaged and trouble-shooting the issue. All patient care systems are functioning normally.”
It was also reported that hospital websites in the Netherlands were being attacked in the same manner this morning.
The group has said it was targeting government websites, banks, and airports with a coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign, flooding a website’s server with traffic.
The group was reportedly behind a similar attack in Germany last week, at JP Morgan Chase in October, and previously at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta and Lockheed Martin.
The attacks have been called “amateurish” by cyber experts and are only being caused to instill fear, especially for those countries that are aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The U.S. and Germany have agreed to send tanks to Ukraine, reversing their previous decisions. Ukraine officials on Sunday called on the two countries to supply them with fighter jets as well.