By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Hackers sponsored by the Iranian authorities final yr tried a “despicable” cyber assault towards Boston Youngsters’s Hospital that threatened to disrupt companies to sufferers, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated on Wednesday.

Wray, in a speech delivered at a convention hosted by Boston School, detailed the incident as he warned concerning the rising risk cyber assaults sponsored by nation states like Iran, Russia and China pose to firms and U.S. infrastructure.

“We obtained a report from considered one of our intelligence companions indicating Boston Youngsters’s was about to be focused, and understanding the urgency of the scenario, the cyber squad in our Boston subject workplace raced out to inform the hospital,” Wray stated.

Wray stated officers with the FBI have been in a position to rapidly get the nationally famend youngsters’s hospital the knowledge wanted to “cease the hazard immediately” and mitigate the risk.

“Fast actions by everybody concerned, particularly on the hospital, protected each the community and the sick youngsters that trusted it,” Wray stated.

Boston Youngsters’s Hospital didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Wray referred to as the incident “one of the despicable cyberattacks I’ve ever seen” and was an instance of the growing dangers hospitals and different suppliers of important infrastructure face from hackers, together with state-sponsored ones.

“If malicious cyber actors are going to purposefully trigger destruction, or maintain knowledge and methods for ransom, they have an inclination to hit us someplace that is actually going to harm,” Wray stated.