The NHS has fallen victim to a malware infection called Qakbot, a data-stealing worm, security experts have said.
The National Health Service has been hit by a worm that steals data, though it is not thought that any patient information has been compromised.
Security firm Symantec said that the worm, called Qakbot, may have infected more than 1,000 computers in the NHS network.
“One unusual aspect of Qakbot is that even though its purpose is to steal information associated with home users, it has also been successful at compromising computers in corporate environments as well as government departments,” Symantec’s Patrick Fitzgerald said.
“Alarmingly, the logs show that there is a significant Qakbot infection on a major national health organisation network in the UK. This threat has managed to infect over 1,100 separate computers that are spread across multiple subnets within their network. We have no evidence to show that any customer or patient data has been stolen,” Fitzgerald continued.
The botnet behind the Qakbot worm is capable of stealing 2GB of data a week and works by recording the suggestions brought up by autocomplete features, Symantec.
You should make sure your security software is fully up to date and run a complete scan of your computer if you believe you have been infected.
