Boston Scientific Hit by Cyberattack, Global Operations in Chaos

Medical device maker Boston Scientific is dealing with a cyberattack that has knocked out parts of its global IT infrastructure, with no clear end in sight for affected systems.

The company, which makes equipment for cardiology, neurology, oncology, and other interventional procedures, spotted the intrusion on 25 August. What followed was a network outage serious enough to halt day-to-day business functions.

Among the casualties: the ability to process and ship customer orders. For a company selling time-sensitive medical devices, that's not a minor inconvenience.

Boston Scientific filed an SEC disclosure this week confirming the obvious — that it doesn't yet know the full extent of the damage. Operational and financial impacts remain unclear, and no timeline has been given for restoring affected systems. Classic crisis communications playbook, in other words.

Whether any data was stolen in the process is still unknown. That said, attacks disruptive enough to cripple order processing tend not to be surgically clean. Data theft and operational disruption usually go hand in hand, particularly with ransomware groups.

Speaking of which, no ransomware or extortion outfit has publicly claimed responsibility so far. That could mean the attack is still ongoing, negotiations are happening quietly, or the attackers simply haven't announced themselves yet. Any of those would be consistent with how these groups operate.

Boston Scientific hasn't confirmed whether ransomware is involved at all. We'll update if they do.