Cyberattack on hospital leads to homicide probe

DUESSELDORF German prosecutors opened a homicide investigation on Friday into the case of a patient who died after a hospital in duesseldorf was unable to admit her because its systems had been knocked out by a cyberattack.

The patient, suffering from a life-threatening illness, had to be turned away on the night of Sept. 11 by the city’s university Clinic and died after the ambulance carrying her was diverted to Wuppertal, 30 kilometres away.

Prosecutor Christoph Hebbecker said he had opened an investigation into negligent homicide against unknown persons, the Kolner-stadtanzeiger daily reported.

If the investigation leads to a prosecution, it would be the first confirmed case in which a person has died as the direct consequence of a cyberattack.

The university Clinic in duesseldorf, capital of Germany’s most populous state of North rhine-westphalia, was hit by a ransomware attack on Sept. 10 that penetrated its systems via a flaw in a Citrix VPN system.

The hospital’s IT operations remain affected and it is still unable to admit patients brought in by ambulance, it said on Friday.