Medical insurance large UnitedHealth Group has confirmed {that a} ransomware assault on its well being tech subsidiary Change Healthcare earlier this 12 months resulted in an enormous theft of Individuals’ non-public healthcare knowledge.
UnitedHealth stated in an announcement on Monday {that a} ransomware gang took recordsdata containing private knowledge and guarded well being data that it says might “cowl a considerable proportion of individuals in America.”
The medical health insurance large didn’t say what number of Individuals are affected however stated the information evaluate was “more likely to take a number of months” earlier than the corporate would start notifying people that their data was stolen within the cyberattack.
Change Healthcare processes insurance coverage and billing for lots of of hundreds of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practices throughout the U.S. healthcare sector; it has entry to large quantities of well being data on about half of all Individuals.
UnitedHealth stated it had not but seen proof that medical doctors’ charts or full medical histories had been exfiltrated from its methods.
The admission that hackers stole Individuals’ well being knowledge comes per week after a brand new hacking group started publishing parts of the stolen knowledge in an effort to extort a second ransom demand from the corporate.
The gang, which calls itself RansomHub, printed a number of recordsdata on its darkish internet leak web site containing private details about sufferers throughout an array of paperwork, a few of which included inner recordsdata associated to Change Healthcare. RansomHub stated it could promote the stolen knowledge until Change Healthcare pays a ransom.
RansomHub is the second gang to demand a ransom from Change Healthcare. The well being tech large reportedly paid $22 million to a Russia-based prison gang known as ALPHV in March, which then disappeared, stiffing the affiliate that carried out the information theft out of their portion of the ransom.
RansomHub claimed in its publish alongside the printed stolen knowledge that “now we have the information and never ALPHV.”
The Wall Road Journal reported Monday that the prison hacking affiliate of ALPHV broke into Change Healthcare’s community utilizing stolen credentials for a system that permits distant entry to its community. The hackers had been in Change Healthcare’s community for greater than per week earlier than deploying ransomware, permitting the hackers to steal important quantities of knowledge from the corporate’s methods.
The cyberattack at Change Healthcare started on February 21 and resulted in ongoing widespread outages at pharmacies and hospitals throughout the USA. For weeks, physicians, pharmacies and hospitals couldn’t confirm affected person advantages for dishing out medicines, organizing inpatient care, or processing prior authorizations essential for surgical procedures.
A lot of the U.S. healthcare system floor to a halt, with healthcare suppliers going through monetary strain as backlogs develop and outages linger.
UnitedHealth reported final week that the ransomware assault has price it greater than $870 million in losses. The corporate reported it made $99.8 billion in income throughout the first three months of the 12 months, faring higher than what Wall Road analysts had anticipated.
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, who obtained near $21 million in whole compensation the total 12 months of 2022, is ready to testify to Home lawmakers on Might 1.
