The United Kingdom's National Health Service has experienced the worst effects of last month’s WannaCry ransomware attack. In just the last week, the universal health care provider, which has multiple divisions providing public health care services to millions across the United Kingdom, tallied just under 1100 patients whose blood sample records have been misplaced due to this attack.
![""]("__GHOST_URL__/content/images/2017/06/rsz_nhso.jpg")
The NHS in Lanarkshire announced recently that it will have to completely collect the blood samples of 1000 patients from the more than 650 000 residents it serves in the Scottish territories of North and South Lanarkshire.
”Our laboratory and clinical staff worked through the weekend to restore services. All specimens which had been labelled as urgent were processed." says Judith Park, director of access for NHS to The Sunday Post. She added, "Laboratory services are now at full operational capacity and patients who required repeat tests to be carried out have been contacted directly by their GP."
Margaret Watt of Scotland Patients Association was less than enthusiastic about the NHS attempts to rectify the situation, stating their waiting lists of patients are already long "without having to be put back by some irresponsible people."
Many of the computers the NHS use in their facilities run an outdated Windows version from as far back as Windows XP. The study of the WannaCry revealed that computers running [older software] have been most vulnerable and crucial in the spread of the worm.
Some WannaCry attackers have been charging up to 600 Bitcoin (ZAR18 705 018.06) for each affected device. ArsTechnica has however claimed the attackers have made roughly ZAR 920 923.26 of the only 263 reported payments made from around 200 000 infected machines across the globe.