3 London Hospitals have major computer virus outbreak

2008-11-23

Three major London hospitals are back online three days after a computer virus forced them to disconnect their network. St. Bartholomew's, the Royal London Hospital and the London Chest Hospital were all infected by the Mytob worm. The virus was detected on a Monday, and while IT support staff felt they had the malware under control, the hospitals systems continued to crash a day later when hospital staff logged in. At that time, the hospitals launched an established disaster recovery plan and were able to get help from external consultants to get the systems restored.

John Leyden, The Register, writes "Medical work at the three hospitals proceeded largely as normal throughout the incident. Theatres and outpatients were unaffected and the main areas of minor disruption came from a decision to temporarily divert ambulances on Tuesday morning. Lab testing and imaging was available throughout the incident, albeit with doctors obliged to use pen and paper backup systems. Administrative work was probably worst hit by the unavailability of computers."

Managers of the hospitals do not believe that this was a targeted attack, but rather an inadvertent infection. And although the Mytob worm contains backdoor functionality, there has been no evidence to suggest that patient records were exposed.

The NHS Trust released this Press Release on November 21st addressing the issue.