Conti Ransomware Crippled Ireland’s Health Service and Exposed Stolen Data

Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) was hit by a major Conti ransomware attack that forced the shutdown of national health IT systems, disrupted hospital clinics, maternity services, radiology, GP referrals, and parts of Covid-19 testing and contact tracing, while emergency care and the vaccination programme continued. Irish officials said the attack began early on a Friday morning, described it as one of the most serious cybercrime incidents ever faced by the state, and confirmed the government would not pay a bitcoin ransom. Investigators also examined related hostile activity, including an attempted intrusion at the Department of Health and earlier distributed denial-of-service activity, while Gardaí, the National Cyber Security Centre, Defence Forces, Europol, and outside cybersecurity experts joined the response.

The attackers were reported to have demanded about $20 million and claimed to have stolen roughly 700 GB of data, raising fears that patient and employee information could be leaked on dark-web extortion sites. Recovery was expected to take weeks as the HSE rebuilt systems and shifted many services to manual processes, while the health service sought court injunctions to restrain the sharing of hacked data. The financial fallout later climbed to about $600 million, and the long tail of the breach continued years later, with the HSE offering compensation to some victims affected by the system-wide cyberattack.