On March 6, 2023, René Serral, professor in charge of the cybersecurity area at inLab FIB and esCERT’s board of directors, was interviewed as a cybersecurity expert on Betevé.
In the interview, René gave his opinion and recommendations on the cyber-attack suffered by the clinical hospital of Barcelona and three primary care centers a few days before, where the data of their patients was appropriated. The Generalitat has already identified the perpetrators of the attack, a group specialized in cybercrime called RansomHouse. Everything seems to be back to normal and, according to René, “if the backups have been done properly, little or no information should have been lost”.
He said that usually the attacking groups are not interested in the data itself, but that these are intermediaries to get money in the form of bitcoins, which is the ultimate goal of the operation. The attackers offer the data to the Dark Web, but they often have a preestablished list of buyers and, in this case, they could have obtained money from people who can benefit from obtaining this type of information, such as health insurers or banks.
To conclude, René explained that it is difficult to know if you have a sufficiently solid security system until you are attacked and, therefore, small and large companies have a hard time understanding that they have to invest money in cyber-security in order to prevent and, in many cases, avoid attacks such as this one.
For more information, here is the link to the original interview:
https://beteve.cat/societat/experts-ciberatac-clinic-ningu-sap-si-te-sistema-solid-fins-que-ataquen/