South Africa’s National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) confirmed on Tuesday that it is dealing with a ransomware attack significantly affecting the dissemination of lab results as the country responds to an outbreak of mpox.
A spokesperson for the organization told Recorded Future News that the ransomware attack began Saturday morning and that hackers deleted sections of their system, including backup servers, meaning they will have to rebuild many of the affected parts.
The NHLS runs 265 laboratories across South Africa that provide testing services for public healthcare facilities in the country’s nine provinces. The spokesperson declined to say which ransomware group was behind the incident or whether a ransom will be paid.
CEO Koleka Mlisana said in a statement that officials do not know when systems will be restored. Preliminary results of an investigation have shown that databases holding patient information were not lost or compromised.
An unidentified strain of ransomware was used to target specific parts of the agency’s IT systems, “rendering them inaccessible and blocking communication” from databases to and from users.