US indicts Iranians over hospital ransomware attacks

The US Justice Department charged two Iranian hackers Wednesday with extorting at least $6 million from hospitals, city governments and public institutions in the US and Canada by remotely locking down their computer systems. The DOJ said Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri deployed the SamSam Ransomware into the systems of more than 200 institutions, encrypting their operations to make them inaccessible until the owners paid ransoms by bitcoin. Victims included the city governments of Atlanta, Georgia and Newark, New Jersey, the University of Calgary in Canada, major US hospitals in Los Angeles and Kansas City, and Laboratory Corporation of America, or LabCorp, one of the world's largest medical testing businesses.

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