Mystery 'virus' Disrupts New Zealand Ambulance Service

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.csoonline.com/article/694092/mystery-virus-disrupts-new-zealand-ambulance-service

By John E Dunn
CSO
November 15, 2011

Staff at New Zealand's St John's Ambulance service were forced to 
coordinate emergency call-outs using manual radio systems last week 
after computers systems were hit by a mystery 'virus'.

The disruption reportedly began on Wednesday when an unidentified piece 
of malware started affecting the systems used across the country for 
paging and radio communications with ambulances in the field, sending 
staff back to manual radio contact.

By Friday morning, engineers at what is the country's main ambulance 
service had finally managed to restore these systems without identifying 
how the malware got inside the organisation's security controls.

"Anti-virus software protected the systems but as a result of the virus 
it impacted on some of the system's services, mainly those related to 
paging and radio. Back-up systems immediately took over when it was 
detected and the workload was managed manually," said ambulance 
communications chief, Alan Goudge to a New Zealand news source.

Exactly why some systems were downed while others survived is unclear 
but the fact that several centres were affected would suggest that the 
malware had the ability to spread within a network, which points to a 
worm component on one network segment.

[...]


_____________________________________________________
Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org
http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isn