Anonymous's Latest Target: Boston Children's Hospital

Brandon Butler writes: "Supporters of the faceless collective known as Anonymous have taken up the cause of a young girl, after the State of Massachusetts removed her from her parents earlier this year. However, the methods used to show support may have unintended consequences, which could impact patient care. On Thursday, the Boston Children's Hospital confirmed that they were subjected to multiple DDoS attacks over the Easter holiday. Said attacks, which have continued throughout the week, aim to take the hospital's website offline. Similar attacks, including website defacement, have also targeted the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network. Both organizations are at the heart of a sensitive topic, child welfare and the rights of a parent." Members of Anonymous are now calling for a halt to the attacks.

Comments

That is why social Hacking is Bad MmmKaa.

[jellomizer]

I've worked in healthcare.
The company I worked for had their services hosted for at a data center. That Data Center also hosted some Banks.
Groups like anonymous think they are performing some social disobedience by DDoS the banks, Also DDoS the actual Data center. While it took a few minutes for the network to switch over there were a few hundred doctors who couldn't access their software, for that time.

XKCD described these attacks like vandalizing a bill board. But it is more like vandalizing a bill board by shooting a gun at it, and not knowing who or what is behind it.

Re:That is why social Hacking is Bad MmmKaa.

[cdrudge]

So you are expecting every small company to afford a large network infrastructure.

No. But I do expect companies that require their hosted services in order to function have backup plans should the service go down.

If in this case of the original comment about several hundred doctors not being able to access their information when the banks were under attack...several hundred doctors isn't a small company. That's a large medical organization. Or if whoever was running the service was treating it like an overloaded shared server then they get what they pay for.

Re:What we would like to know

[Tucan]

Here is the story:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

which could impact patient care

[frovingslosh]

Attacks to a website could impact patient care? If there is any truth at all to this (which I really doubt) then people should be made aware of it immediately. Thanks Anonymous, I really want to know if I'm going to get patient care at a hospital where that care could be compromised just by a problem on their website.

Re:which could impact patient care

[Samantha Wright]

1. Children's hospitals receive donations and nail research grants with an alarming deftness. Boston Children's Hospital is, according to their own architecture, the best. There's no shortage of money. They did have some layoffs a couple of years ago, but with a ridiculous savings ratio (255 jobs, costing 89.5 million annually, constituting somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3% of their budget.)

2. Their primary website is located at 134.174.13.251 (childrenshospital.org). Patient info retrieval is hosted on 134.174.13.5 (apps.childrenshospital.org). There is a booking form located on the main site, but at any rate it's working just fine now.