Additionally, hospital staff could not access the treatment history of patients, as well as the results of X-rays, CT scans, or other medical tests. All patient registration was done manually.
While the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI are working to identify the culprits, the hospital determined that they could not wait any longer and paid a significantly reduced ransom to regain access to their systems.
It was not revealed how the ransom reduction negotiations or the bitcoin transfer took place.
"The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key," hospital CEO Allen Stefanek said in a statement. "In the best interest of restoring normal operations, we did this."
This type of virus, often referred to as ransomware, infects a computer or server, and then uses publicly available encryption methods to lock the contents. The encryption is strong enough to prevent the FBI from cracking it. Hackers then offer the key to decrypt the files to the victim, for a fee.