University of Iowa hospital websites go down

Information technology staff is investigating, spokeswoman says

Jan. 31, 2023 3:56 pm, Updated: Jan. 31, 2023 6:14 pm

University of Iowa Health Care complex, which houses University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, is seen in this photo taken in 2014 in Iowa City. (The Gazette)

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa Health Care officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon their public websites are down and information technology staffers were “investigating the issue,” according to UIHC spokeswoman Laura Shoemaker.

Affected websites included those for the UI Hospitals and Clinics, the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital and the UI Carver College of Medicine. Officials didn’t answer questions about whether the downed sites were the result of a cyberattack or when the outages started.

“These websites do not contain patient data or information. Patient care is not affected by these outages,” the university said. “If you need to book an appointment, please call 800-777-8442 or visit your MyChart account.”

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center issued a report warning the “hacktivist group ‘KillNet’” had targeted the U.S. health care industry previously “and is actively targeting the health and public health sector.”

According to that report, KillNet is a pro-Russian group that's been active since January 2022 and is known for campaigns against countries supporting Ukraine — like those in NATO, including the United States.

Distributed denial-of-service attacks — known as DDoS, meant to disrupt the regular traffic of a targeted server — is the group’s main type of cyberattack, according to the federal government report.

“While KillNet’s DDoS attacks usually do not cause major damage, they can cause service outages lasting several hours or even days,” the report said.

BetterCyber, a technology security company, on Tuesday wrote on Twitter that KillNet had attacked U.S. health care organizations across all 50 states. The company attached to its tweet a list of affected websites that included uihc.org — the UI Health Care domain.