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Spyware Prank Exposes Hospital Medical Records
cheerytt writes "Let this be a lesson to all the broken-hearted geeks out there. A 38-year-old Ohio man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he meant to install on the computer of a woman he'd had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at a children's hospital. Spyware was sent to the woman's Yahoo e-mail address in the hope it would be used to monitor what his former girlfriend was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery department. The spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures via e-mail, including details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 patients. The man will pay $33,000 to the hospital for damages and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison."
In a hospital no less.
What happened to the geek who setup the transparent web proxy that allowed that?
How we know is more important than what we know.
In Belgium, many of the hospitals have most of their computers running Linux...
Newly hired employees are tested for nicotine as part of a pre-employment panel of medical tests.
That'll be interesting in the future - discrimination on the grounds of disability or medical condition, perhaps?
There's some evidence that nicotine delivered by patch can help with things like parkinsons, alzheimers, depressive conditions, ADD and a whole lot of other things. Various native peoples have ingested tobacco to treat constipation and wom infestations, and I see no reason why people using it exclusively as a herbal remedy for these or other conditions should be penalised. I'm a non-smoker and won't take it up - I think it's disgusting - but if nicotine patches were safe and effective and cheap when compared with other medication I'd use them and take my prospective employers to court if need be. I'd also be the guy passing around the poppseed bagels, fwiw...
Right. Ever worked in that environment? Nope? Thought not.. I have..
You're faced with:
Consultant (medical doctor) says "I need to access the net to be able to read research papers, proposals, and various ad hoc sites that contain research on the subjects that I deal with, along with external mail that I use because I move from hospital to hospital quite regularly.".
IT says: "You can't access the net from that machine".
Consultant goes to see hospital directors, stamps feet, and IT get overridden.
Bear in mind there are several thousand PCs on a lot of hospital sites, with maybe 3 technicians to go fix and maybe one or 2 sysadmins. Hospital HR frequently sees IT as just waving a magic wand and things happen miraculously, so it's a "good way to save costs".
If you tie machine names down that can't access the net, I can guarantee a consultant will find a way to get a machine in the area that does, even if it's moving someone else's there.
As for breaking terms and conditions of use. Who do you think will win that pissing competition? Someone in the beleagured and under funded/under resourced IT department who is overlooked and overworked, or the consultant with the hand shakes and the ear of the board of directors?
Coupled with the fact that not all antivirus and anti-malware will spot every variant. It'll get 90+ percent, but you always hear about the ones that get through.
I'm surprised an executable got through the proxy filtering there, but hey.. Without knowing all the ins and outs of this in detail, I'm going to reserve judgement.
The real world can be a messy morass of politics.. Working in a hospital, or academia, really has that in excess.. Try working in one if you think it's easy.. I'd be interested in hearing your opinion after doing it for a while..
"Are there any proxies who can filter _all_ sort of packing/zipping/password protected executable files with a 100% hit rate? I doubt it."
What????
Don't you know about limited user rights? That prevents ANY installation of ANY program.
If someone accidentally kills someone else while driving a car, he or she will get less time for manslaughter than this man is supposedly getting for sending an email to a PRIVATE address.
Is this story a hoax? There is only one other report, and that report is identical: Misdirected Spyware Infects Ohio Hospital. Both apparently came from the IDG News Service. This is the last sentence of both stories: "A spokeswoman with the Akron Children's Hospital was unaware of the case and unable to comment." She was unaware of a case that is 18 months old?
Also the admin needs to get fired too, he is not doing his job!
So many attempts to blame the admin, without knowing the circumstances. In the real world, security costs money. Money is limited. Security "interferes" with work. Interfering with work too much won't be tolerated by the higher ups. I've seen it multiple times. If security interferes with some new wiz-bang software that management wants, then the security goes. An admin that refuses get fired. For those that don't work in IT, you'd be surprised how many security decisions are made by people not qualified to make such decisions.
Let me give you two real-life examples. I worked as the IT head at a medical clinic. Some medical billing software was leased with my knowledge and it came with it's own AIX server. The root password was blank and it had to be connected to the rest of the LAN. I was not allowed to touch the machine by my boss's boss. Later on, she had the bright idea of allowing remote access. I objected in writing, backed by my boss. Objection overruled. Within a week, the server was rooted. It took the company who owned the server 3 months to figure out it wasn't a hardware issue, despite my warnings on the first day of trouble.
Second, more recent example, from just two weeks ago. I was ordered to connect an XP SP2 machine (not under my control) directly to the Internet AND the internal LAN. I was not allowed to filter any traffic (I tried and was ordered to stop) or purchase/install any additional hardware (no approval), including wiring. It's a VOIP server and the company higher ups what to be able to have a company phone anywhere. A port scan shows Windows Firewall is disabled, and I have no idea if there is at least any AV software (not allowed to touch it). Remember, I'm under orders to give it unfettered Internet and LAN access, at the same time. Secure? No. But I'm under direct orders to do it this way. At this point, the best I can think to do is put my objections in writing so I have a CYA paper trail (already done).