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Change Healthcare is going through a brand new cybersecurity nightmare after a ransomware group started promoting what it claims is Individuals’ delicate medical and monetary information stolen from the well being care large.
“For many US people on the market doubting us, we in all probability have your private information,” the RansomHub gang stated in an announcement seen by WIRED.
The stolen information allegedly contains medical and dental information, fee claims, insurance coverage particulars, and private info like Social Safety numbers and e-mail addresses, in accordance with screenshots. RansomHub claimed it had well being care information on active-duty US navy personnel.
The sprawling theft and sale of delicate well being care information represents a dramatic new type of fallout from the February cyberattack on Change Healthcare that crippled the corporate’s claims-payment operations and despatched the US well being care system into disaster as hospitals struggled to remain open with out common funding.
Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, beforehand acknowledged {that a} ransomware gang often called BlackCat or AlphV breached its methods, and advised WIRED final week that it’s investigating RansomHub’s claims about possessing the corporate’s stolen information. Change Healthcare didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the group’s alleged sale of its information.
The big variety of affected person information that RansomHub claims to be promoting is a testomony to Change Healthcare’s function as a essential middleman between insurers and well being care suppliers, facilitating funds between each events and amassing reams of delicate details about sufferers and their medical procedures within the course of.
Among the many pattern information that RansomHub posted are a listing of open claims dealt with by the corporate’s EquiClaim subsidiary that features affected person and supplier names; a hospital document for a 74-year-old lady in Tampa, Florida; and a part of a database document associated to US navy service members’ well being care.
RansomHub stated it could enable particular person insurance coverage firms that labored with Change Healthcare and had their information compromised to pay ransoms to forestall the sale of their information. It specified that it was promoting information belonging to MetLife, CVS Caremark, Davis Imaginative and prescient, Well being Internet, and Lecturers Well being Belief.
Change Healthcare’s “processing of delicate information for all of those firms is simply one thing unbelievable,” RansomHub stated in its announcement.
Most corporations whose information RansomHub claims to own didn’t instantly reply to WIRED’s request for remark.
Mike DeAngelis, the manager director of company communications for CVS Well being says the corporate is “conscious of unsubstantiated claims from menace actors that confidential information, together with private info of sufferers and members belonging to a number of organizations, was accessed as a part of Change Healthcare’s cyber safety incident.”
“We’re intently monitoring Change Healthcare’s response to this difficulty and can present updates with extra info as applicable,” DeAngelis provides, noting that Change Healthcare has not but confirmed that affected person information “was impacted by this incident.”
Brett Callow, a menace analyst on the safety agency Emsisoft who intently tracks ransomware gangs, says the brand new sale of stolen information was in all probability “much less about really promoting the info” and extra about placing Change Healthcare—and the companion firms whose information it failed to guard—“below extra stress to pay.”
Change Healthcare seems to have paid a $22 million ransom to AlphV to cease it from leaking terabytes of stolen information.
Two months into the disaster spawned by the ransomware assault, Change Healthcare has confronted mounting losses. The corporate lately reported spending $872 million responding to the incident as of March 31.
On the similar time, Change is below rising stress from lawmakers and regulators to clarify its cybersecurity lapse and the steps it’s taking to forestall one other hack.
A subcommittee of the Home Power and Commerce Committee held a listening to on the well being sector’s cyber posture on Tuesday, with key lawmakers saying they have been dissatisfied that UnitedHealth Group declined to make an govt accessible to testify. And the Division of Well being and Human Providers is investigating whether or not Change Healthcare’s failure to forestall hackers from accessing and stealing its information violated federal data-security guidelines.
Up to date 4/16/2024, 5:38 pm ET: Added extra particulars concerning the corporations whose information RansomHub claims to own.
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