Atrium Health’s website experienced outages Monday afternoon as a Russian hacking group shared a threat against the Charlotte-based health care system and other US groups.
The company’s “hospital systems and patient portals” weren’t affected, Atrium said.
Killnet listed Atrium Health’s Cabarrus County location in a post on the social media platform Telegram along with more than a dozen other hospital systems, Observer news partner WSOC reported.
Killnet is a pro-Russian hacking group known for its cyberattacks, primarily on European governments and infrastructure. They commonly use “denial of service” attacks to disrupt business, Politico previously reported.
Denial of service attacks “occur when legitimate users are unable to access information systems, devices, or other network resources due to the actions of a malicious cyber threat actor,” the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says. Hackers “flood the targeted host or network with traffic until the target cannot respond or simply crashes, preventing access for legitimate users.”
In recent months, Killnet targeted countries supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to Politico.
Atrium said in a statement about 7 pm it had “successfully resolved the situation,” which it said was “similar to widespread instances at other health systems around the world on Monday.”
“It’s important to note the disruption affected only our public-facing website,” the company said. “Our hospital systems and patient portal remained fully functional at all times.”
Other hospital systems across the US — including University of Michigan Health and Stanford Health Care — reportedly experienced problems with their websites Monday.
this story was originally published January 30, 2023 5:50 PM.
Mary Ramsey is a service journalism reporter with The Charlotte Observer. A native of the Carolinas, she studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and has also worked in Phoenix, Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky.