Nuance regains some services after NotPetya cyberattack
Nuance, a major provider of voice and language tools, is slowly regaining function on many of its platforms and services after falling victim to a NotPetya/Petya cyberattack on June 27.
As of Sunday, several large clients are able to use multiple Nuance sites that are now fully functional, officials said on the company’s official Twitter account. Doctors also began dictating on the eScription LH platform again, as of Sunday.
Nuance officials got the activation server for its Dragon Practice Edition platforms back online on July 7, while its eScription LH platform regained function July 7 -- with at least one major customer and all doctors able to use the platform to dictate.
[See them all: 10 stubborn cybersecurity myths, busted]
By July 6, 2,500 clients from eight countries were able to utilize Nuance’s eScription RH and Clinic 360 platforms, which Nuance set up as alternatives for its clients unable to use the platforms affected by the NotPetya attack. These clients started with the Emdat platform on July 3.
Officials said they don’t believe its clients outside of the U.S. were affected by the outage. The company continues to host update calls for its clients still experiencing service interruptions.
Nuance was just one of the many victims hit with the NotPetya cyberattack, which has been deemed a wiper malware masked as ransomware.
[Also: Nuance knocked offline by ransomware attacking Europe]
More than 2,000 attacks have hit in 64 countries, with Ukraine hit the hardest. In fact, the Ukrainian police seized accounting firm M.E. Doc’s servers, as initial infections were allegedly spread through a malicious software update issued by the company, according to Reuters.
The company could face charges as part of the investigation, resulting from M.E. Doc officials ignoring multiple warnings that the security of its IT infrastructure had serious vulnerabilities.
[Also: Researchers find Petya ransomware vaccine, but no kill switch]
The U.S., India, Brazil, Denmark and Russia were also hit by the attack, including biopharma giant Merck and a large Pennsylvania health system. West Virginia-based Princeton Community Hospital will replace its corrupted network with a newly built system as a direct result of NotPetya.
On a positive note, security firm Positive Technologies may have discovered a way for NotPetya victims to recover data from corrupted systems. Unfortunately the method only works when NotPetya had administrator privileges and used the Salsa20 algorithm for encryption.
An error in the algorithm allows some data to be recovered without a key, if the IT staff leverages heuristics. Officials said it can take several hours to accomplish, and data recovery depends on a few factors, like hard drive size and free space.
NotPetya victims can find the recovery method on Positive Technologies’s blog.
Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com
