Vulnerability of the internet-based society: Denial of Service attacks paralyze pharmacies in Finland

A brief Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack paralyzed the Finnish pharmacies earlier this week.

In the last five years, the Finnish health care system has transitioned almost completely to using electrical prescriptions. A doctor writes the prescription on his computer and it is submitted to a national (centralized) health care database. The same database also stores all medical history on patients.

The vulnerability of the system has been discussed earlier, when technical problems have caused temporary shutdowns in health care services.

This time, however, the system was deliberately attacked by an unknown attacker from outside Finnish borders.

Similar attacks have previously targeted critical Finnish telecom infrastructure. The authorities do not discount the theories that attacks are probes by the Russian military/intelligence services, who are trying spot weak points in the Finnish national infrastructure.

Link (in Finnish only):

[link to www.iltalehti.fi]