Theresa May’s Tories invited cyber-attack on the NHS – because they wouldn’t pay for upgrades
According to some sources, it seems the National Health Service suffered a massive ransomware cyber-attack on May 12 because Theresa May’s Conservative government refused to pay for software upgrades.
Here’s some proof:
Letter from 2014 shows Government halted funding for XP support in the NHS even though they knew the risk was URGENT https://t.co/LI4r2VDu1U pic.twitter.com/Ta3hLUagYl
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) May 13, 2017
In Feb 2015, NHS Wales spent £1.452m replacing virtual server, network upgrade & old PCs. In May 15, Jeremy Hunt did opposite in NHS England pic.twitter.com/toZGY7pPd7
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) May 13, 2017
In 2015, The Conservative Government ended a £5.5m contract with Microsoft that left NHS Computers open to Cyber Attack. Hunt should resign. pic.twitter.com/LhYiio8Y77
— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) May 13, 2017
Pathetic, isn’t it?
Already the accusations are flying – that the Conservatives, well advanced in their ‘stealth’ plan to privatise the NHS by bringing in private companies to bid for contracts and starving the public service of funds until it collapses, have been reckless about online security.
Jeremy Corbyn, who launched a ‘digital manifesto’ for the Labour Party last year that was praised by experts, had nothing but contempt for the hackers who launched the attack – and the Conservative government that made it possible.
He said: “What we’ve now got is a bunch of 21st Century highway robbers that have hacked into our NHS and are basically offering protection money to get the information back in order to treat cancer patients or anybody else.
“It’s unbelievably disgusting and I’ve got nothing but contempt for those people that have done it, and I’m sure all of you would share that.
“But I’m also very angry that in 2014, there was a one-year renewal of the protection system on the NHS systems which was not renewed after that and not renewed the year after that and so our systems are now not upgraded and not protected. As a result, we’ve got this dreadful situation that NHS workers are facing today.
“And so we obviously support our NHS workers but I tell you this:
“A Labour government would not leave our NHS’s very vital information systems unprotected. We would protect them.”
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Will be interesting how many private contractors who should have had the latest software and protections in place under procurement contracts actually spent their private resources protecting and upgrading. Maybe they will have needed to have backward support implemented in order to communicated with an out of date NHS sytem. Equally a lot of NHS actual hardware kit is run on old software that could also be open to attack and worse takeover control. Not sure I would want a robot surgeon going into murder mode whilst I’m on the slab. Typical Tory short sighted cost saving kamikaze thinking and lack of basic common sense….their major weakness in all things. When you think back on how many billions was wasted on grand NHS data Schemes that had to be aborted as failures which could have gone to upgrading basic software and improving IT security…not so many brown envelopes as national new software development. However excellant advert for strong and effective leadership I’m sure they will lie their way out of this mess as usual which is where their privatisation leader the slippery Hunt will waffle about nd with his usual weasle words instead of just resigning.. Yes you Hunt the NHS is safe in your hands…..NOT. Vote Labour get these self serving amateurs out of our lives.
after robbing 40billion from underfunding the nhs they also forgot to tell that 2011 atos had patient data then crapita oh dear these devils rob their own granny
How dreadful it must be for those poor devils needing urgent hospital diagnosis and or treatment.
Well apparently there were 100 other nations attacked not just us, and the software used may have originated in the US secret service. The government has a history of being useless with it, other than the Home Office which so far has shown itself to be sensible in always having last but one release of software so the bugs are cleared out, and there is still upgrades and patches being developed. The NHS, due to the manner in which it has been fragmented, to aid privatisation, has many different operating systems rather than a national one.
I can’t understand why the NHS is still using Windows anything anymore – haven’t they heard of Linux? I wonder how much money you could save to spend on actual healthcare by not paying the “windows tax” over and over again?
Ah Linux. What a survivor – original kernel written more than 25 years ago but still valid today.
You make a good point.
We need rid of the Tories because they don’t give a damn about about our country or the people in it.
This should hopefully put an end to the claim that Corbyn – and Labour – are weak on National Security. Hackers – whether state sponsored or freelance – can’t be stopped with nuclear weapons. But taking the money we currently waste protecting the UK from a superpower that ceased to exist a quarter of a century ago and investing it in defence against cyber-attack and upgrading digital infrastructure will protect us from cyber-attack.
Dis I read somewnere that Trident uses Windows XP? Wonder if they were affected.
Yeah, ‘Windows for Submarines’. I mentioned it in an article a while back.