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NotPetya Outbreak Left Merck Short of HPV Vaccine Gardasil (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: The NotPetya malware infection shut down pharmaceutical giant Merck's production of the pediatric vaccine GARDASIL last June, forcing the company to borrow the drug from a stockpile maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to meet demand, The Security Ledger reports. The anecdote was contained in a quarterly filing by Merck with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. That filing also showed that the company continues to suffer financial fallout from the outbreak of the NotPetya malware in June, reducing both sales and revenue for the quarter by hundreds of millions of dollars. In its quarterly 8-k filing, Merck said that revenue for the quarter was "unfavorably impacted" by around $135 million due to "lost sales in certain markets related to the cyber-attack." Sales in the third quarter of 2017 were also reduced by around $240 million, which Merck chalked up to production shutdowns resulting from NotPetya. In a chilling insight into the extent of the disruption the malware caused to Merck's operations, the company disclosed that part of its quarterly losses were linked to the interruption of its production of GARDASIL, a vaccine used to prevent Human Papillomavirus (HPV) which is linked to certain cancers and other diseases. To make up for what it described as "overall higher demand than originally planned," Merck was forced to borrow the vaccine from a stockpile maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the company said.
They are good in fighting human viruses just not in fighting cyber ones.
Security isn't flashy or cool but when everything comes to a grinding halt because of malware then you have earned it because you refused to invest in basic security.
No tears shall be shed for the PHBs at Merck.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wart#Prevention
Gardasil 6 is an HPV vaccine aimed at preventing cervical cancers and genital warts. Gardasil is designed to prevent infection with HPV types 16, 18, 6, and 11. HPV types 16 and 18 currently cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases,[11][12] and also cause some vulvar, vaginal,[9] penile and anal cancers.[10] HPV types 6 and 11 are responsible for 90% of documented cases of genital warts.[14]
More than 200k cases of cervical cancer diagnosed worldwide ; before the generalization of the vaccination against HPV around 15% of female have got genital warts, now we are around 0.5%... And nearly zero sides effects. Yeaaah, a little shitty vaccine.
They stockpile vaccines specifically for this reason. A big fire, apparently a simple virus that every decent OS and AV wouldnâ(TM)t run or even market upset could cause companies like Merck to reduce or stop output. The theory is that in those cases the CDC could set up other production lines whilst using the stockpile.
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It mention sales and revenue. So it could still be that sales (what the customer gets charged by their insurance) is down by millions whilst quarterly revenue (what Merck gets from the Insurance) only goes down by a little over 100M. Or that the millions are projected over multiple quarters whilst revenue for this quarter is down exactly by this number.
Although I think $135M is enough money to consider dropping Microsoft, if you have one of these every quarter, your argument for âoecost savings with the status quoâ is moot,
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Look something up about VD before you spout off nonsense.
You carry a form of HPV because itâ(TM)s a normal thing to have and humans are the only reservoir, just like you have e.coli, and various fungi in your intestine. And just like cholerae, many strains are probably harmless. If you ever had any sort of wart or skin growth anywhere, probably when you were little, you have HPV.
Most diseases in humans are venereal after all and most diseases have more vectors to spread than just extramarital sex.
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So what we have here is a general failure to take responsibility. And you can't blame it all on the NSA. Not by a long shot.
[respectfully] sure I can... on the NSA. All of it. Sure shot.
In fact this might be the first directly accountable and provable example of a particular virus-something 'created' in a laboratory that escaped from the laboratory and triggered a general epidemic... cybernetic OR biological. I can blame NSA because on the day it was discovered, it would have required a criminal amount of arrogance (to be fair, or stupidity) to assume that other malevolent actors would not independently discover Eternalblue. And let's toss in the fact that most of affected systems in the world were and still are, within the USA.
So their oath is to protect and defend the Constitution and close second, uphold the National Security interests of the United States. What part of those oaths were upheld? Just going on affected system stats, I'll argue that by absence of any disclosure policy for this certain case of national vulnerability -- and their observed failure to do so -- plus the significant chance it would be independently discovered... that NSA was either deliberately targeting Americans... or they have irresponsibly bad aim.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I've seen this myself. Managers wave it off with an "It'll be fine" brush off. IT workers just want to get their deliverable done and out the door. Until you have a group that is a first class citizen in your organization, and is concerned with security, these sorts of thing will remain common occurrences.
Um, Gardasil can't remove HPV, it just guards against it if the person hasn't gotten it yet. It needs to be administered before a person is ever exposed to HPV... so that has to be at a very young age. Given how new Gardasil is, I rather doubt there's much long term data to show if it's effective.
15% of women with genital warts? Reduced to .5%? In what, 6 years? I find that... hard to believe.
I've spoken with a prominent/nationally recognized ENT doc on this subject at length. He told me flat out that Gardasil is mostly a scam and wouldn't recommend his patients get it. He quoted the statistics, stating HPV diagnosis methods, what is known/unknown, and all the types of HPV, and which cause difficulties.
Nearly everyone in the world has some form of HPV. Who it effects, why, how, and when are still a mystery. Given how many people have it, and how few people get any symptoms let alone have complications, the cost and fear made by pharmas over it is maybe not worth it.
At the end of the day, Gardasil is mostly a scare tactic used to drive pharmaceutical revenue.
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HPV causes a lot of things (various isotypes are responsible for warts, most head and neck cancer, penile cancer); it is also the (99.7% of the time) cause of cervical cancer. HPV vaccination has been shown to prevent cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and carcinoma in situ, the precursor lesions to invasive cervical cancer, in large randomized trials. The current 9-valent HPV vaccine is 97% effective in preventing CIN 2 (moderate) and more severe disease (CIN 3, carcinoma in situ). It also prevents the vaginal equivalent (VIN2/3) - 100% effective, in fact, among HPV naive populations, and 62% among the overall population.
Current cervical cancer prevention strategy involves Pap smears and then biopsies and surgical intervention when we find abnormalities. It's not cheap, and involves women (best case) getting an exam they don't like every 3 years from 21-29 years of age, and every 5 years from age 30-65 years of age. In the worst case, in areas and among populations that don't get Pap screening, people either can try to get to "screen and treat" centers (where we use liquid nitrogen to spots that show up on a cervix swabbed with vinegar), or, more often, simply consign a percentage of women to a miserable death. Cervical cancer is common (17.8 per 100k in countries without screening, with 9.8 of those dying), which amounts to about 266,000 deaths per year. In developed countries, cervical cancer is the eleventh most common type of cancer and ninth most common cause of cancer mortality (3.3 per 100k). In the US, that amounts of 13,000 cases per year, and 4100 deaths.
It stands to reason that HPV vaccine, since it prevents in HPV infection, and advanced pre-cancerous lesions, will likely be shown to prevent incident cancer as well when the vaccine has been around long enough. (The vaccine was first licenses in June 2006; most women get colonized with HPV around sexual debut but the cancer doesn't show up until age 35-55, a 20-40 year delay.) The tragedy of the vaccine, if any, is that it is largely available only in developed countries, where most people can get treatment rather than dying from the disease. That's not nothing: ask any woman who has to have repeated colposcopies and LEEP surgery if she would have preferred to have gotten 2 shots around age 11 and skipped all of the attended pain, expense, and risk of later preterm labor.
In fact, with the introduction of widespread HPV vaccination in the United States proposals are already afloat to change Pap screening—one proposal suggests every 10 year screening for vaccinated persons. Despite the expense of the vaccine ($240 for the two shot series) it's likely to be cheaper and less cruel than the current state of the art.
You are free to consider Gardasil to be a "scare tactic." As a family physician who gets to follow up on plenty of abnormal Paps, and not a particular fan of the pharmaceutical companies, my kids are getting vaccinated