SSuddenly, Vanuatu found itself forty years behind. The story began on October 30, when officials in the capital, Port Vila, noted oddities in their emails. Then, gradually, the websites and mailboxes of government agencies died out.
On November 5, the new Prime Minister, Ishmael Kalsakau, had to admit the unthinkable: the State of Vanuatu was attacked by hackers. A month later, services are still not restored. Civil servants find their pens, take out typewriters and directories from cupboards… and the government has still not regained the use of its Internet sites and many of its computer activities.
This does not only concern state services. Questioned by the journalists of the Australian public television ABC News, Vincent Atua, the director of the central hospital of Port-Vila, must recognize that the system of invoicing of its suppliers of drugs does not work any more, nor communications. Called for help, the Australian experts landed.
Sometimes political motives, often villainous
This is not the first time that hackers have attacked these small Pacific nations, often equipped with outdated equipment and little converted to new technologies for secure storage and the fight against cybercrime. “It must be admitted that governments, organizations and companies are now constantly monitored by evil actors”said Pat Conroy, the Australian Minister for the Pacific, sent on the spot.
He is well placed to know since, on Thursday 1er December, hackers completed the posting on the dark web of the medical data of customers of the Australian insurer Medibank, for lack of having obtained the payment of a ransom. This data includes the contact details of the patients, but also details of their possible illnesses or addictions. This case, started on November 9, shortly followed the hacking of data from the local telephone operator Optus. They obviously took care to communicate on November 30, World Computer Security Day. Because the alert is global.
Much closer to home, the Corbeil-Essonnes hospital experienced a mishap similar to that of its counterpart in Vanuatu this summer, with computer system paralysis and data theft. The motives of the attackers are varied, sometimes political, often villainous. The era of networks has given birth to a new devil who now targets our hyperconnected society. The return to the pen is no longer a nostalgic chimera.