Gavin Grey: UK Correspondent on UK Cyber attack

London hospitals declared a critical incident after a cyber-attack led to operations being cancelled and emergency patients being diverted elsewhere. 

It applies to hospitals partnered with Synnovis - a provider of pathology services. 

UK Correspondent Gavin Grey told Heather du Plessis-Allan “This was potentially one of the worst cyber-attacks in the UK.” 

Grey said “Overnight, the ransomware company dumped 400 gigabytes on their darknet site – including patient names and dates of birth.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Devin Gray is our UK correspondent with US now even
in Gevin, Hi, Heck, how bad is this?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Heck yeah, it's it's got really quite nasty now. So
this was potentially one of the worst ever cyber attacks
in the UK, with more than one thousand hospital and
GP appointments affected. That's general practitioner local doctor appointments affected.
Operations also canceled via the disruption to pathology services. The

(00:25):
hack was to a company called Synovis. Now they are
a provider to the National Health Service, particularly over basically
blood testing, and overnight the ransomware company has really come
out and dumped four hundred gigabytes of private information on

(00:46):
their darknet site and Telegram channel. The data includes patient names,
dates of birth, national Health Service numbers and then descriptions
of blood tests. We don't yet know if test results
are also in the data. There are also financial spreadsheets
detailing the contracts between hospitals, the local doctors and this
company too, so it is a massive fallout from this.

(01:09):
What would suggest has happened is that the National Health Service,
indeed Synovis, have refused to come up with any money
and to pay ransom for this hack to go away,
and that's why we've seen this data now being published.
Apparently healthcare is now the industry for these hackers to
try and get into. It's thought to be this group

(01:29):
called Kielin QILM and they've apparently made now the sort
of health services a big target after one health group
reportedly paid out roughly thirty eight million New Zealand dollars
earlier this year for a similar hack.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Given this bitching scandal that's going on with the election date,
is this going to weigh on Rishi's popularity, what little there.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Is left of it, well, and his credibility. I mean,
I think this is really really damaging to him. So
he was on Tea the last night in a televised
debate one to one with the other leaders of the
three other main parties, and in that he was asked
first question, straight off the bat about these claims that

(02:14):
a candidate had laid a bet on the date of
the election and that her husband, who was campaign director
of Rishi Sunac's team, is also in the frame for
allegedly placing a bet. Rishi Sunak said he's incredibly angry
with the quote, and then so but he couldn't say
much because all this is being investigated, and indeed it is.

(02:37):
But you know, the abuse of the gambling has very
tough laws here and could be a criminal offense if
it's proven. Now all those involved are denying responsibility. But
not only now. Is it three Conservatives who were either
candidates or quite high up in the machinations of the
Conservative Party that are alleged to put a bet on

(02:57):
the date of the election, but also one of the
senior protection officers of the Prime Minister. And you do
begin to think, well, hang on a minute. You know,
surely everyone was told this is illegal and you can't
do it. The date was a surprise. The date of
July the fourth for the general election was a surprise
to most people. So the odds of a July the
fourth would have been high at the bookmakers. And well,

(03:19):
it's had this effect, And as I said, I really
think it's a thing against the Prime Minister and his
credibility givin I.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Mean the fact that so many of them, I mean,
if one of them had gone a bit, you would think, okay,
that's really not cool. But the fact that so many
have done that, does that suggest that they've actually been
discussing it amongst themselves.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Or that are very wide full of people were discussing it. Yeah,
and they're simply on the fringes of it, and mean,
you just think it really digs in the credibility of politicians,
the integrity, the honesty of politicians. And I don't just
mean Rischie sine I do mean all around. And indeed
that's been a theme for many of the campaigns with

(04:00):
less than two weeks to go now before the general election,
about trying to get integrity back into politics is what
the opposition parties are saying. But of course you know
it's those other people. I mean, how could Rischie Sinek
have much sway over what a role protection or rather
what a protection squad officer from the police would say
if it's alleged that that is true as well. So gosh,

(04:21):
they're really I think it's down to trust and that's
a very very important word in an election to.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Write it does Gavin, Thank you very much. Talk to
you on Monday. Devin Gray are UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
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