HIT: Virus shuts down Dartmouth Hitchcock network

Computer security experts have been warning for years that a malicious computer virus unleashed by hackers or a terrorist group could create havoc in the healthcare system. On Thursday, we got a look at the kind of problems that could lie ahead for the national health IT infrastructure as the Zotub worm hit Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and quickly propagated across the health system's network, shutting down access to patient medical records at its facilities across New Hampshire. Hospital officials said doctors at the hospital were without access to patient records for about two-and-a-half hours. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock network was infected on Tuesday and began suffering serious outages on Thursday morning.

- see this story from the Concord Dispatch
- the Zotub patch is available from Microsoft here

PLUS: Also hit was Indianapolis-based WellPoint, where engineers were able to quickly contain the problem. Story