(5 Apr 2016) RESTRICTION SUMMARY: AP CLIENTS ONLY
AP TELEVISION - AP CLIENTS ONLY
Washington - April 5, 2016
1. Various exteriors of MedStar Medical Group office
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Tami Abdollah, AP Cybersecurity Reporter
"Hackers got into MedStar's corporate network and were able to put ransomware on it by exploiting a flaw in their server that has been known about since 2007 were the earliest warnings. And there was another warning in 2010 about a flaw in this what's known as the JBOS application server. This is... these flaws, there were actually multiple warnings put out vulnerability report by the government, as well as the community that produces the software."
3. Exterior shot of MedStar Medical Group office
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Tami Abdollah, AP Cybersecurity Reporter
"And it's unclear how such a vulnerability was allowed to persist on their network over so much time. MedStar says it continually patches its systems and that also there were no patient files impacted by ransomware."
5. Exterior of MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Tami Abdollah, AP Cybersecurity Reporter
"Ransomware gets into a computer system and basically begins encrypting files and locks people out of critical files, photos, you name it -- your music and then it pops onto their screen a note that says 'hey, unless you pay us a certain amount of money' -- often 10 thousand, $15 thousand for a n entire system at a company for example, 'you're not getting back these files.'"
7. Sign at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Tami Abdollah, AP Cybersecurity Reporter
"And so in this case, I spoke with a person familiar with this hack and they basically said it had infected some archives, some duplicate files, some imaging files, but as soon as that ransom note popped up on several people's screens, MedStar shut everything down. By turning off their system they limited the spread. And then they had to sanitize it, they brought in Symantec and then they went through and slowly brought everything back online."
9. Sign at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Tami Abdollah, AP Cybersecurity Reporter
"As pertains to MedStar it appears that something wasn't fixed on their system for many years. If you want to be conservative going back to at least 2010, it's unclear what they did in 2007, and that doesn't change the culpability of the hackers that changed their system and all that entails there -- but it does sort of give you an inside look into the issues and the responsibility companies have to protect their system, especially when they are holding critical files like patient medical records."
11. MedStar sign
STORYLINE:
The Associated Press has learned that hackers who recently disrupted a large hospital chain broke into a computer server left vulnerable on its corporate network.
That was despite urgent public warnings since at least 2007 that the vulnerability needed to be fixed with a simple update.
A person familiar with the investigation told AP that hackers exploited design flaws that had persisted for years on the MedStar Health Inc. network.
The person wasn't authorized to discuss the findings publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI, which is investigating, declined to discuss the case.
Fixing the problem involved installing an available update or manually deleting two lines of software code.
MedStar said it continuously applies patches to fix software vulnerabilities.
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