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The health tech giant handles health data for about half of all Americans
wellness indemnity giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed that a ransomware attack on its wellness tech subsidiary Change Healthcare earlier this year result in a huge thievery of Americans ’ secret healthcare data .
UnitedHealth saidin a instruction on Mondaythat a ransomware gang take files containing personal information and protected wellness information that it says may “ cover a solid proportion of people in America . ”
The health insurance giant did not say how many Americans are strike but tell the data review was “ likely to take several calendar month ” before the troupe would begin notifying individuals that their entropy was stolen in the cyberattack .
Change Healthcare process insurance and charge for hundreds of thousands of hospitals , pharmacies and medical practices across the U.S. healthcare sector ; it has access to monolithic amounts of wellness information on about one-half of all Americans .
UnitedHealth said it had not yet seen evidence that MD ’ charts or full aesculapian story were exfiltrated from its systems .
The admission fee that hackers slip Americans ’ wellness data comes a hebdomad after a novel hacking groupbegan publishing fate of the steal datain an effort to gouge a second ransom money need from the companionship .
The work party , which calls itself RansomHub , issue several file on its dark web leak site containing personal info about affected role across an array of documents , some of which included interior files related to Change Healthcare . RansomHub said it would sell the stolen data unless Change Healthcare pay a ransom money .
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In a statement render to TechCrunch , UnitedHealth voice Tyler Mason confirmed the company paid the cybercriminals . “ A ransom money was pay as part of the society ’s committal to do all it could to protect patient datum from disclosure . ” The troupe would not confirm the amount it pay .
RansomHub is the second gang to demand a ransom from Change Healthcare . The health tech giant reportedly pay $ 22 million to a Russia - base criminal gang called ALPHV in March , which then disappeared , stiffing the affiliate that carry out the data theft out of their fortune of the ransom money .
RansomHub claimed in its post alongside the published stolen data that “ we have the data and not ALPHV . ”
In its statement Monday , UnitedHealth acknowledged the publication of some of the single file but stopped short of lay claim possession of the written document . “ This is not an official breach presentment , ” UnitedHealth said .
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the criminal hacking affiliate of ALPHV broke into Change Healthcare ’s networkusing steal credentials for a systemthat let remote access to its internet . The hackers were in Change Healthcare ’s meshwork for more than a week before deploy ransomware , allow the hackers to slip important amounts of information from the company ’s systems .
The cyberattack at Change Healthcare began on February 21 and resulted inongoing widespread outages at pharmaceutics and hospitalsacross the United States . For weeks , physicians , pharmacies and hospital could not swear patient benefits for dispensing medication , organizing inpatient tutelage , or processing anterior authorisation necessary for surgeries .
Much of the U.S. healthcare system grind to a freeze , with health care providers facing financial pressing as backlogs grow and outages linger .
UnitedHealth reported last week that the ransomware blast has be it more than $ 870 million in exit . The ship’s company reported it made $ 99.8 billion in revenue during the first three months of the year , faring substantially than what Wall Street analysts had carry .
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty , who receive closely to $ 21 million in total recompense the full class of 2022 , is set totestify to House lawmakers on May 1 .
update with input from UnitedHealth .
Want to see an NHS doctor ? educate to cough up your information first .
