BleepingComputer reports that healthcare organizations across the U.S. have been warned by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the FBI of ongoing attacks by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware operation.
Nearly 70 organizations have been targeted by ALPHV/BlackCat since mid-December, most of which were in the healthcare industry, said the agencies in a joint advisory. The attacks — which may have been brought upon by the ALPHV/BlackCat administrator's appeal to affiliates to target hospitals after the FBI took down its leak sites and servers in December that were later "unseized" by the ransomware group — should prompt the implementation of additional cybersecurity measures across healthcare and public health organizations," the agencies added. Such a federal advisory follows reports linking the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang to the ongoing outages at major U.S. healthcare revenue and payment cycle management provider Change Healthcare which stemmed from the exploitation of a critical ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1709.
