In the long distant past, when I wasn’t even three decades old, I was a hacker. To be precise, I explored online networks without permission, being very careful indeed not to break them, in order to learn more about the emerging connected world.
What I didn’t do was think it would be an excellent opportunity to steal data or blackmail people using whatever I might have stumbled upon. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to go and try to take a hospital offline or grab a load of patient data before locking down the original until half a tonne of cryptocurrency was sent in my direction. But then I am not, and never have been, a profit-driven arsehole who doesn’t care about the harm they cause or to whom that harm is caused.
Criminals who target hospitals are the scum of the earth.
The same can be said for cybercriminals who partake in ransomware attacks. These scumbags really are the lowest of the low. As someone with complex health issues myself, I know only too well how hard everyone who cares for me works, many with very little reward in
