No ransoms were paid to hackers during the cyberattacks that hit the University of Mississippi Medical Center or Institutes of Higher Learning this year, officials confirmed to Mississippi Today.
“No state taxpayer dollars were used” to pay the perpetrators of either attack, said Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and the chair of the Senate Universities and Colleges Committee.
A cyberattack struck the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning offices on Sep. 7, temporarily rendering the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid unable to process student applications and payments. IHL officials are working with federal law enforcement and cybersecurity professionals to determine what happened and whether confidential or sensitive data was accessed or compromised.
IHL spokesperson John Sewell said the agency did not pay a ransom connected to the attack. He said he could not yet share an update on the agency’s recovery process.
In February, a ransomware attack targeted the University of Mississippi Medical Center, compromising the health care system’s IT network and leading officials to shut down affected systems to contain the threat. As a result, the state’s only academic medical center closed clinics across the state and canceled elective procedures for nine days. IHL oversees the state’s public universities, including UMMC.
Ransomware, or malicious software that holds computer systems or data hostage in demand for payment, has increasingly targeted healthcare organizations with the aim of garnering large payouts by disrupting critical infrastructure.
Marc Rolph, a spokesperson for UMMC, said Friday the medical center did not pay a ransom to the hackers.
Officials told Mississippi Today in April the medical center was conducting a detailed forensic analysis with support from the FBI and cybersecurity experts to determine what data was accessed or exfiltrated during the cyberattack.
Ransomware group Medusa claimed credit for the cyberattack in March, nearly a month after the initial attack that shut down UMMC’s network. The group demanded payment to prevent the publication of stolen data, cybersecurity news outlet The Record reported. A UMMC spokesperson declined to confirm whether Medusa was the organization that attacked the medical center. In an April blog post, Louann Woodward said the perpetrator is well known to the FBI.
On Monday, State Auditor Shad White sent a letter to IHL Commissioner Al Rankins Jr. seeking more information about the agency’s response to both attacks. White requested information about the nature and scope of the incident, whether a ransom or extortion payment was requested, information about any such payments and copies of and plans for remediation.
“Taxpayers deserve to know what happens to their money and the IHL should be transparent with what happened here,” White wrote in the letter.
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