Leak at Haute-Comté intercommunal hospital centre

On 19 October 2025, the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Haute-Comté — a public hospital serving the Pontarlier area of the Doubs (Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), France — was struck by a ransomware attack. The intrusion began during the night of 18–19 October, around 3 a.m., when a "Cryptolocker"-type ransomware encrypted part of the hospital's IT data.

To contain the spread, management ordered a complete shutdown of the information system. Clinical staff fell back to paper-based working — handwritten prescriptions, fax and manual record-keeping — to keep patient care going, while the hospital set up a freephone line for appointment enquiries and asked the public not to overload its telephone switchboard. The attackers reportedly demanded a ransom of around 5 million euros in bitcoin to restore access to the encrypted systems.

Because the attack centred on encryption of internal systems, the principal impact was operational disruption rather than a confirmed mass exfiltration of records; French authorities (the ANS, ANSSI and the regional health agency ARS Bourgogne-Franche-Comté) were engaged in the response, and a criminal complaint was filed.

• Hospital IT systems and stored data (encrypted)
• Patient-facing services (admissions, scheduling, clinical record access) disrupted

The hospital has not paid the ransom and is undertaking a full rebuild of its information system. As of 2026 the situation had stabilised but a return to normal operations was not expected before 2027, leaving the incident ongoing.