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 most likely have your private knowledge,” the RansomHub gang mentioned in an announcement seen by WIRED.
The stolen knowledge allegedly consists of medical and dental information, cost claims, insurance coverage particulars, and private data like Social Safety numbers and electronic mail addresses, in response to screenshots. RansomHub claimed it had well being care knowledge on active-duty US army personnel.
The sprawling theft and sale of delicate well being care knowledge 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 known as BlackCat or AlphV breached its methods, and informed WIRED final week that it’s investigating RansomHub’s claims about possessing the corporate’s stolen knowledge. Change Healthcare didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark concerning the group’s alleged sale of its knowledge.
The wide range of affected person knowledge that RansomHub claims to be promoting is a testomony to Change Healthcare’s function as a important middleman between insurers and well being care suppliers, facilitating funds between each events and gathering 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 army service members’ well being care.
RansomHub mentioned it could enable particular person insurance coverage firms that labored with Change Healthcare and had their knowledge compromised to pay ransoms to stop the sale of their information. It specified that it was promoting knowledge belonging to a number of main insurance coverage firms.
Change Healthcare’s “processing of delicate knowledge for all of those firms is simply one thing unbelievable,” RansomHub mentioned in its announcement.
Brett Callow, a menace analyst on the safety agency Emsisoft who intently tracks ransomware gangs, says the brand new sale of stolen knowledge was most likely “much less about really promoting the information” and extra about placing Change Healthcare—and the accomplice firms whose information it failed to guard—“beneath extra strain to pay.”
Change Healthcare seems to have paid a $22 million ransom to AlphV to cease it from leaking terabytes of stolen knowledge.
Two months into the disaster spawned by the ransomware assault, Change Healthcare has confronted mounting losses. The corporate just lately reported spending $872 million responding to the incident as of March 31.
On the similar time, Change is beneath growing strain from lawmakers and regulators to elucidate its cybersecurity lapse and the steps it’s taking to stop one other hack.
A subcommittee of the Home Vitality and Commerce Committee held a listening to on the well being sector’s cyber posture on Tuesday, with key lawmakers saying they had been disillusioned that UnitedHealth Group declined to make an govt accessible to testify. And the Division of Well being and Human Companies is investigating whether or not Change Healthcare’s failure to stop hackers from accessing and stealing its knowledge violated federal data-security guidelines.
