Hackers have infected the infrastructure of Parkview Medical Middle — the largest health center in Pueblo County, Colorado — with cryptocurrency ransomware.

Citing a infirmary employee, Fob News reported on April 24 that Meditech — the Parkview Medical Center'due south system for storing patient information — was infected with ransomware and rendered inoperable. The hospital confirmed the incident in a statement:

"On Tuesday, April 21, Parkview Medical Center was the target  of a cyber-incident which has resulted in an outage in a number of our IT systems."

As Cointelegraph recently reported, ransomware attacks confronting hospitals are ongoing, despite the fall in the overall number of attacks amid the coronavirus crisis.

Brett Callow, a threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, told Cointelegraph that considering of the ongoing pandemic "ransomware attacks have the potential to be devastating and could very well upshot in the loss of life."

Callow also said that because of this, some cybercrime groups may now be more motivated to attack hospitals than usual:

"Certain actors may well be more motivated to assault healthcare providers at this point in fourth dimension. Hospitals are already strained — overwhelmed, in some cases — and criminals may believe they would have no option but to pay, and to pay very rapidly."

Parkview Medical Center also told Flim-flam that it has switched to a paper record arrangement to track and treat patients:

"Upon learning of the incident, Parkview immediately engaged leading third-party forensic experts to investigate and mitigation is well underway. Patient care is always our first priority. Patients will not run across whatever impact to the level or quality of intendance beingness delivered."

Ransomware is a major cybersecurity threat

Ransomware malware is rapidly evolving and is increasingly viewed by many every bit a major — if not the biggest — cybersecurity threat. While nearly all ransomware discovered so far demands a ransom in cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity firm Check Point recently unveiled a new ransomware attack wherein the attackers require credit carte du jour payment.

As Cointelegraph reported before this calendar month, another innovative ransomware recently started its switch from Bitcoin (BTC) to Monero (XMR) in an attempt to protect the cybercriminal's identity.