FBI arrests suspect in 2014 Boston Children's Hospital cyberattack
The FBI has arrested a hacker suspected of participating in Anonymous' 2014 attack against Boston Children's Hospital, The Boston Globe reported.
Martin Gottesfeld, 31, of Somerville, Mass., was arrested on Feb. 17 in Miami after being rescued from a small boat off the coast of Cuba by a Disney cruise ship. He's due to appear in U.S. District Court in Boston, where he'll be charged with of conspiring to damage the computers at Boston Children’s and another facility in nearby Framingham, according to the article. Gottesfeld faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The April 2014 cyberattack occurred in protest of the controversial custody case of Justina Pelletier, who was being kept a patient at Boston Children's as a ward of the state against the wishes of her parents. Hacktivist group Anonymous launched multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks that targeted the hospital's servers and hamstrung its operations for a week.
In a statement, the hospital said it “is grateful to the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office for investigating the cyberattack launched on the hospital in April 2014 and for apprehending the hacker who led the attack and holding him accountable. We also want to thank our employees who assisted the FBI throughout its investigation and who helped build the comprehensive systems and procedures that were able to thwart the attack and protect confidential information. We are pleased that these measures have since been adopted throughout the Longwood hospital and research community.”
Boston Children's Hospital CIO Daniel Nigrin, MD, discussed the experience at the 2014 Privacy & Security Forum.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.