Boston Scientific cyberattack causes global disruption to operations

The Massachusetts-based company, which makes medical implants such as pacemakers and defibrillators, said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that on Tuesday it began experiencing "disruptions and limitations of access" to its IT systems and business applications critical to its operations.

Boston Scientific said the cyberattack has affected its ability to ship and process orders, but did not say whether the disruption extends to customers with medical devices and implants. When asked by TechCrunch, spokesperson Chanel Hastings shared the company's public statement but declined to comment on whether patients are affected, what steps they should take, or the nature of the incident.

The company, which treats about 48 million patients a year, said in its public statement that its investigation is ongoing and that a timeline for restoring its systems is not yet known. The cause of the cyberattack is unclear. Local media in Ireland reported that thousands of staff at Boston Scientific's Cork campus were sent home on Tuesday after network communications were cut across the company.

Boston Scientific is the latest health technology company to be hacked this year, including medical device makers Abbott Laboratories and Medtronic. Earlier this year, Iranian-backed hackers were blamed for a cyberattack on Stryker, another U.S. medical device maker, which allowed them to remotely wipe tens of thousands of employee devices across its Windows network by abusing a centralized device management portal provided by Microsoft. Public internet records show that Boston Scientific relies largely on Microsoft and Amazon Web Services for its corporate infrastructure.