Hold on to your stethoscopes: The health care industry was at the top of hackers' wish lists in cyberattacks during 2015, according to IBM data.

According to SecurityWeek News, cyber criminals have the health care industry in their sights, especially via the Shellshock vulnerability — which, according to IBM X-Force's 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index, was a major factor in many of 2015's attacks. Shellshock is a vulnerability in the Bash shell, providing compromise potential to systems running on Linux, Solaris and Mac OS. The vulnerability has existed for more than two decades, but it was only in late 2014 that it was publicly disclosed.

The index found that the financial services industry dropped back to third place after being the most targeted industry in 2014, with health care nabbing the top spot and manufacturing surging to second. Fourth place was occupied by government agencies, and transportation came in at fifth place.

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