VistA (medical IT system)

2023: Cat failure

In the United States, a cat jumped on the keyboard of a system administrator's computer and erased data from a Veterans Affairs center in Kansas. This became known in early October 2023.

According to The Register, the incident occurred during an online conference of the director of the center with department employees, in which about 100 people participated. During the conversation, one of the programmers admitted that when he checked the servers, his cat jumped on the keyboard and deleted all the data. The subsequent series of random commands led to the loss of key server cluster settings, which interrupted the system for four hours.

The cat jumped on the keyboard of the system administrator's computer and erased the data of the Veterans Affairs Center

That's why I got a dog, "said Assistant Secretary for Information Technology Kurt DelBene, after which laughter rang out in response.

The Ministry of Veterans Affairs in Missouri said that the problem was quickly discovered and the system was restored within four hours. After the cat's destructive actions, network engineers were able to return all the data and restore the disabled cluster. According to them, additional protection measures were taken in the electronic registration and work system to avoid accidental damage to cluster configuration files by cats.

There were no more problems or direct consequences for veterans as a result of this incident, the ministry said.

A ministry spokesman, speaking to The Register, clarified that the incident at Kansas City Veterans Affairs Medical Center did occur on September 13, 2023. Its reason, according to the interlocutor of the publication, was "the problem with the transfer of data to Vista due to the unintentional deletion of server profiles."^[1]

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