Change Healthcare is dealing with a brand new cybersecurity nightmare after a ransomware group started promoting what it claims is Individuals’ delicate medical and monetary data stolen from the well being care big.
“For many US people on the market doubting us, we in all probability have your private knowledge,” the RansomHub gang mentioned in an announcement seen by WIRED.
The stolen knowledge allegedly consists of medical and dental data, fee claims, insurance coverage particulars, and private data like Social Safety numbers and electronic mail addresses, based on screenshots. RansomHub claimed it had well being care knowledge on active-duty US navy 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 called BlackCat or AlphV breached its methods, and instructed 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 in regards to 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 position as a vital 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 data 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 mentioned it might permit particular person insurance coverage firms that labored with Change Healthcare and had their knowledge compromised to pay ransoms to forestall the sale of their data. It specified that it was promoting knowledge belonging to MetLife, CVS Caremark, Davis Imaginative and prescient, Well being Web, and Lecturers Well being Belief.
Change Healthcare’s “processing of delicate knowledge for all of those firms is simply one thing unbelievable,” RansomHub mentioned in its announcement.
Most companies whose knowledge 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 knowledge, together with private data 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 data as acceptable,” DeAngelis provides, noting that Change Healthcare has not but confirmed that affected person knowledge “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 knowledge was in all probability “much less about really promoting the information” and extra about placing Change Healthcare—and the companion firms whose data it failed to guard—“beneath further 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 not too long ago 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 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 Companies is investigating whether or not Change Healthcare’s failure to forestall hackers from accessing and stealing its knowledge violated federal data-security guidelines.
Up to date 4/16/2024, 5:38 pm ET: Added further particulars in regards to the companies whose knowledge RansomHub claims to own.
