Conficker Intrudes Whipps Cross Hospital’s Systems

Whipps Cross Hospital has recently been hit by the nasty computer virus "Conficker", as a result of which a major portion of the hospital's IT system has been affected badly. The fault was first noticed in the third week of August 2009.

The hospital officials claimed that the Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust could verify that the Conficker worm intruded the hospital's IT system on August 5, 2009. The intrusion of the virus left 5% of the PCs (30 machines) affected. The machines remained out of action for several days. Though, since then, the systems have returned to normalcy.

In addition to this, a spokeswoman at Whipps informed that none of the hospital's work had been affected because of the problem, reported Guardian on August 21, 2009. She added that no patient care had got affected by the virus infiltration and that the work is on the way to make sure that the systems affected can be restored as soon as possible. The trust would also like to assure its patients as well as the local community served by it that it is having a comprehensive plan to take care of such incidents in future.

According to a patient, they had been informed that the computer virus had infected several scores of PCs, creating havoc for the staff.

As per the security experts, the incident has reminded that the Conficker, whose activation date of April 1 was hyped a lot by the press, remains active. Though the botnet established by the worm has not been used for launching spam attacks or denial of service attacks, it still remains a big threat as several thousands of machines have been infected by the worm.

The current Conficker attack has followed after Barts and the London NHS Trust were slammed in an investigation in January 2009 for a virus that affected Bartholomew's Hospital, The London Chest Hospital (Bethnal Green) and The Royal London (Whitechapel) in November 2008.

A report stated that these previous fault could potentially affect the well-being of patients, morale of staff, and above all, the reputation of the trust. The virus attack also resulted into the postponement of some non-urgent operations.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/8/2009