http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3604834 28.10.2004 Hackers may have been responsible for a major computer failure at Waikato Hospital two weeks ago. It was the longest unplanned blackout of the Waikato Health Board's core computer systems and the worst reported to Hewlett Packard -- the company that sold the computers -- in the Asia-Pacific region. Technicians from Australia and Waikato Hospital have identified possible causes ranging from hackers through to a failure of the embedded software that instructs the electronic components how to process commands. Health board staff across the region were forced to handwrite patient information and staff had their wages delayed after the computer system failure took the payroll and patient management systems down for 34 hours. No patient records were lost and the handwritten records have been entered into the system. The systems were stored on new servers thought to have a 99 per cent resistance to technical faults. Board chief executive Jan White told a board meeting yesterday it was difficult to find the cause of the fault because it was such a rare occurrence. It was important the fault was found so future breakdowns could be avoided. "It's still a major issue for us and until we get a diagnosis, it still has a major impact on where we should be going with our systems," she said. Independent computer experts were to be hired to review the computer systems to make sure nothing had been overlooked. "We have to be aware that we may never find the fault, but we do need an independent view," Dr White said. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Thu Oct 28 2004 - 08:04:15 PDT