A new cyber attack hit the French blood banks.
A cyber attack on several French blood service facilities was designed to sharply raise the temperature in the cooling units. However, this was stopped before the blood products or samples were damaged, Le Monde reports.
The incident comes amid reports of similar cyber attacks in a number of European countries, with supermarkets saying this week that food had gone bad after remote tampering with fridges and freezers. The total damage amounts to millions of euros.
The French Blood Institute (EFS) said the temperature and defrost settings at three plasma storage sites were changed to extremely high levels on Monday. This was stated in the statement of the organization published in the late evening of November 3.
The attack hit a supplier of refrigeration equipment installed at three EFS sites. The storage facilities contained bags of plasma for transfusion, as well as plasma used to manufacture drugs. All drugs have been reliably transported or protected.
According to EFS, monitoring and alarm systems quickly detected anomalies, allowing staff to take immediate action. "No threat to health was detected, not a single blood product was lost," the institution emphasized.
The collection and distribution of blood in France continues as usual, so the supply to hospitals and other medical facilities has not been interrupted.
The French National Agency for Cyber Security and the Ministry of Health are investigating the incident.
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