Kuwait Health Ministry restoring systems after cyberattack takes down hospitals, healthcare app

Kuwait’s Health Ministry is recovering from a cyberattack that took down systems at several of the country’s hospitals, as well as the country’s Sahel healthcare app.

The Ministry of Health website is still down as of Thursday afternoon but the agency released a statement through the Kuwait News Agency.

The government used backups to restore systems at the Kuwait Cancer Control center and within the offices that manage the national health insurance system and expatriate check-up system.

The country of more than four million people has about 36 hospitals, including 20 public hospitals. Kuwait is considered to have one of the best healthcare systems among Gulf nations. 

Officials said an investigation showed how the hackers got into their systems but they stressed that they "took all initiatives to maintain basic and vital healthcare services in primary healthcare centers and in public hospitals to maintain their data.”

“The ministry also worked with competent government security agencies to contain the problem and stop its spread to other systems and to reinforce security systems and update them in order to combat breaches more effectively,” the statement adds. 

The hackers were stopped from reaching "essential databases," according to the statement, but the ministry was forced to shut down certain systems in order to install needed updates. 

They did not provide a timeline for when all systems would be restored but claimed they would be soon.

No ransomware gang has taken credit for the attack. 

Kuwait’s Ministry of Finance was attacked by the Rhysida ransomware gang exactly one year ago on September 25, 2023. The year before, ​​several Ikea outlets in Kuwait were targeted by the Vice Society ransomware gang, which researchers believe may have ties to Rhysida.

A prominent cybersecurity consortium released a report on Thursday highlighting that more than 117 countries were attacked by ransomware gangs in 2023, a new record.

About 6,670 ransomware incidents were tracked in total last year, a 73% year-over-year increase.