RansomHouse attack forces Hospital Clínic de Barcelona to cancel surgeries

Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, an 819-bed teaching hospital serving more than half a million people, was knocked offline by a ransomware attack on the morning of Sunday, March 5, 2023. The Catalan government attributed the intrusion to the RansomHouse group and described it as a sophisticated attack carried out in virtualised environments.

Applications and communications systems went down, leaving clinicians unable to reach patient records and forcing staff to work on paper. The hospital handled around 800 urgent cases manually on the day of the attack and diverted some patients to other facilities. Roughly 150 non-urgent operations were postponed and up to 3,000 outpatient appointments were cancelled, along with several hundred laboratory tests.

Three affiliated primary care centres, CAP Casanova, CAP Borrell and CAP Les Corts, were also affected. Radiology, endoscopy, dialysis and outpatient pharmacy services continued to run, and the hospital's SAP system was not hit.

Catalan officials said no ransom would be paid. At the time of the first reports no financial demand had been received, and the hospital had not set a date for full recovery, aiming instead to restore 40 to 50 percent of elective surgery and selected outpatient consultations from the Tuesday after the attack.