Worm infects hospital systems
Security breach at MGH, Brigham said to be 'modest'
The computer worm that struck systems around the nation over the last week breached security at Partners HealthCare Systems Inc. and infected 800 computers at four of its five acute-care hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's in Boston.
Partners called the breach ''modest" and said it did not appear to have affected patient care or compromised medical records. The healthcare network has 55,000 computerized devices connected to its systems.
Responding to an alert of a vulnerability last week by Microsoft Corp., Partners computer experts had already installed preventive measures on the most sensitive records systems by the time the worm attacked Saturday night, said John Glaser, Partners chief information officer.
The systems affected were lower in priority, including computers used in research and in the human resources department, he said. The worm caused the computers to repeatedly reboot on their own, but did not destroy data.
''We were in mid-flight of remediation when this thing came through," said Glaser. Two Partners hospitals in the suburbs were also affected, Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton and North Shore Medical Center, in Salem. All the problems had been resolved by Wednesday, he said.
The latest computer worm to sweep the country took advantage of a gap in the defenses of Microsoft's Windows 2000 program. Several media outlets -- including The New York Times, CNN, and ABC -- reported it had invaded their networks. San Diego County was in the process of removing the worm from 12,000 computers. In Massachusetts, it blocked e-mails and slowed Internet connections in state government computers and caused delays at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the Associated Press reported.
Jon Kuhn, director of product management at SonicWALL Inc., a computer security company in Sunnyvale, Calif., said the worm's pattern was to break into a Windows-based network through one point, such as a laptop, and spread rapidly inside the network. Networks of hospitals linked by dedicated lines can be vulnerable unless each hospital has an array of individual security screens, Kuhn said.
Christopher Rowland can be reached at crowland@globe.com. 
