A ransomware attack targeted a major Irish hospital under the Health Service Executive (HSE), encrypting critical patient systems and stealing sensitive medical records, including personally identifiable information (PII) of thousands of patients. The attack disrupted emergency services, delayed surgeries, and forced the hospital to divert ambulances to other facilities for over 48 hours. Cybercriminals demanded a multi-million-euro ransom, threatening to leak patient data on the dark web if unpaid. The hospital’s outdated legacy systems and lack of phishing-resistant MFA (noted in the article as a 97% vector for identity attacks) were exploited. While the HSE refused to pay, the incident triggered a nationwide audit of healthcare cybersecurity, revealing systemic vulnerabilities in Ireland’s public health infrastructure. The attack aligns with the article’s trend of ransomware actors targeting critical services with life-or-death stakes, leveraging AI-enhanced phishing and stolen credentials from infostealer malware like Lumma Stealer (disrupted by Microsoft in May 2025).