Medieval Diseases Find New Vector In United States: The Homeless

via Anna Gorman writing at The Atlantic (along with Kaiser Health News) are sounding the klaxxon horns in warning of an astonishing fact in the United States: The influx of infectious diseases in the homeless populations of several states. This my friends, is a true and deadly emergency.

And then, there's this...

Russia Flogging Zero-Day Exploits →

via Joseph Cox, writing at Motherboard (a Vice property), tells ths unfortunate tale of a Russian company selling zero-day exploit code, targeting hospital software... Today's MustRead. H/T

"Gleg offers several different packs of exploits for clients: Agora covers mainstream web software; the “SCADA+ Pack” is focused on “industrial software and hardware environment” issues, and, predictably, the MedPack includes vulnerabilities for medical software. A one year subscription for MedPack costs $4,000, and for that Gleg provides 25 exploits per year, most of which are zero-days, Gurkin wrote." - via Joseph Cox, writing at Motherboard (a Vice property)

Reconnaissance Worm →

Danny Palmer - of ZDNet - tells a tale of a new (and ostensibly - mysterious) worm, evidently targeting health care contraptions (reportedly X-Ray Photography Systems and MRI Scanners). There is some discussion attributing the attacks are performing reconnaissance...

BGU Security Researchers Urge Physicians to Patch Their Systems →

via Zaid Shoorbajee - reporting for Cyberscoop, comes a story of security entropy, this time in medical imaging device system patching and an esteemed University's research targeting those systems. In this case, a research paper from Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Malware-Lab yielded good (but not-necessarily-acted-upon-advice) to Medical Professionals: Patch Your Flawed Imaging Systems...

'“In cases where even a small delay can be fatal, or where a dangerous tumor is removed or erroneously added to an image, a cyberattack can be fatal,” said Tom Mahler, an author on the paper. “However, strict regulations make it difficult to conduct basic updates on medical PCs, and merely installing anti-virus protection is insufficient for preventing cyber-attacks.” ' - Zaid Shoorbajee - reporting for Cyberscoop

Healthcare Systems - Ransomware Targets →

Superb accounting of the built-to-fail systems in healthcare, and the predeliction of those same systems towards victimization by ransomware attacks. Via Robert N. Charette writing at the IEEE's Spectrum Magazine.