News Health Sector Hit by Orangeworm-Cyber-Attack-Group

A group called Orangeworm was caught installing a custom backdoor named Trojan.Kwampire within the large health sector based organizations as was recently discovered by Symantec. the backdoor was split among its targets, which were healthcare providers, pharmaceutical firms, and equipment manufacturers. The malware, Kwampire, was found on various medical devices, such as MRI and X-Ray machines, and machines used for helping patients fill out their consent forms for procedures. One theory for why this happened, as no images from any of the machines was stolen, was that this was a planned operation to know more about the machines work. The group itself has been actively targeting the health sector for the past three years, with this being their most recent hit. Other targets have been the manufacturing, IT, and the logistics and agricultural sectors.

This hit, should come as a wake up call, as medical devices are not protected as strongly as regular computers. This has been a looming ghost in the medical community as well as the cyber-security field as a large targeted attack on the medical sector by a state sponsored group, coupled with an attack on infrastructure could be catastrophic. What researchers have said about the group is that they do not seem to act like a state-sponsored group, leaving the majority to believe that this is the work of independent individuals.


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