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Change Healthcarehas confirmed a February ransomware attack on its systems , which institute far-flung gap to the U.S. healthcare system for weeks and resulted in the larceny of medical record affecting a “ substantial proportion of people in America . ”
Ina statement Thursday , Change Healthcare said it has begun the process of notifying touched individuals whose info was steal during the cyberattack .
The health technical school behemoth , owned by U.S. insurance conglomerateUnitedHealth Group , processes patient policy and billing for thousands of infirmary , drugstore and aesculapian practices across the U.S. health care sector . As such , the company has access to massive amounts of health data onabout a third of all Americans .
The cyberattackprompted the troupe to shut down its systems , resulting in outages and delays to thousands of healthcare providers who rely on Change , and touch countless patients who could not incur prescriptions or had medical care or procedures delay .
modification tell in its a la mode statement that it “ can not confirm exactly ” what datum was stolen about each individual , and that the information may change from soul to person .
The affected information include personal entropy , such as names and address , dates of parentage , telephone set bit and email address , as well as government identity document , such as Social Security numbers , number one wood licenses and recommendation numbers .
The data also include medical records and health entropy , such as diagnoses , medications , exam results , imaging and care and discussion plan , said Change . The cyberpunk steal wellness insurance policy information , include programme and policy details , as well as billing , claims and payment selective information , which Change said admit financial and banking information .
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Change said it was still in the “ late stage ” of its review of the stolen data point to fix what was take in and that more affected individuals may be identified . Some of the steal information may come to to surety who paid health care bills for someone else , the society suppose .
The fellowship contribute that affected individuals should receive poster by post lead off late July .
The ransomware attempt on Change Healthcare stands as one of the largest - ever known digital thefts of U.S. medical book . While the full impact of this data breach remains undecipherable , the ramifications for the millions of Americans whose individual medical info was irretrievably compromised are in all likelihood incalculable .
variety said it secured a copy of the stolen dataset in March to review for identifying and notifying affected individuals , whichTechCrunch previously report was obtained in telephone exchange for pay a ransom money requirement .
UnitedHealth confirm it paid at least one ransom demandto the cybercriminal group behind the ransomware attack , known as ALPHV , in an effort to prevent the publishing of the stolen Indian file . Another hack group called RansomHub demanded an additional payment from UnitedHealth after take ALPHV made off with the first ransom requital but result the stolen information with one of its affiliates — fundamentally a declarer — who fall apart in and deployed the ransomware on Change ’s arrangement .
RansomHubsubsequently published several file cabinet on its colored WWW leak siteand threatened to betray the data point to the high bidder if another ransom was n’t give .
accord to UnitedHealth chief administrator Andrew Witty , the hackers break into Change Healthcare ’s meshwork using a set of stolen certificate to an interior scheme that wasnot protected with multi - factor authentication , a security characteristic that makes it more difficult for malicious hackers to pervert stolen passwords .
The ransomware flak be UnitedHealth around $ 870 million in the first three month of the year , during which the caller made $ 100 billion in taxation , according to the company ’s earnings written report . UnitedHealth is expected to report its most recent earnings in mid - July .
