Medical health insurance big UnitedHealth Group has confirmed {that a} ransomware assault on its well being tech subsidiary Change Healthcare earlier this yr resulted in an enormous theft of People’ personal healthcare information.
UnitedHealth mentioned in a press release on Monday {that a} ransomware gang took recordsdata containing private information and guarded well being data that it says could “cowl a considerable proportion of individuals in America.”
The medical health insurance big didn’t say what number of People are affected however mentioned the info overview 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 a whole bunch of hundreds of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practices throughout the U.S. healthcare sector; it has entry to huge quantities of well being data on about half of all People.
UnitedHealth mentioned it had not but seen proof that docs’ charts or full medical histories have been exfiltrated from its methods.
The admission that hackers stole People’ well being information comes per week after a brand new hacking group started publishing parts of the stolen information 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 net leak website containing private details about sufferers throughout an array of paperwork, a few of which included inner recordsdata associated to Change Healthcare. RansomHub mentioned it could promote the stolen information except Change Healthcare paid a ransom.
In a press release offered to TechCrunch, UnitedHealth spokesperson Tyler Mason confirmed the corporate paid the cybercriminals. “A ransom was paid as a part of the corporate’s dedication to do all it might to guard affected person information from disclosure.” The corporate wouldn’t verify the quantity it paid.
RansomHub is the second gang to demand a ransom from Change Healthcare. The well being tech big 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 info theft out of their portion of the ransom.
RansomHub claimed in its submit alongside the printed stolen information that “we now have the info and never ALPHV.”
In its assertion Monday, UnitedHealth acknowledged the publication of a few of the recordsdata however stopped in need of claiming possession of the paperwork. “This isn’t an official breach notification,” UnitedHealth mentioned.
The Wall Avenue 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 have been in Change Healthcare’s community for greater than per week earlier than deploying ransomware, permitting the hackers to steal vital quantities of information 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 america. For weeks, physicians, pharmacies and hospitals couldn’t confirm affected person advantages for meting out medicines, organizing inpatient care, or processing prior authorizations obligatory 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 value it greater than $870 million in losses. The corporate reported it made $99.8 billion in income throughout the first three months of the yr, faring higher than what Wall Avenue analysts had anticipated.
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, who acquired near $21 million in whole compensation the total yr of 2022, is ready to testify to Home lawmakers on Could 1.
Up to date with remark from UnitedHealth.
