Scammers encrypt patient records from Gold Coast medical centre

A Gold Coast medical centre is being held to ransom by hackers who are demanding $4000 to decrypt sensitive information held on a server.

Hackers hit the Miami Family Medical Centre, encrypted thousands of patient health records using ransomware, and are demanding the ransom to decrypt the sensitive information.

“It's people who know how to break in past firewalls and hack passwords to get onto the server," co-owner David Wood told the ABC.

"We're trying to work out how to pay the hackers or find someone to decrypt the information."

Wood said that the medical centre will continue to operate, even though he admitted that it is difficult to operate without patient records.

Last week, Sophos director of technology strategy James Lyne predicted that ransomware infections will increase in 2013 with a massive increase in the quality of implementation.

In September, a Northern Territory business was forced to pay a $3000 ransom to hackers who had encrypted its financial records.