Health insurance coverage 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 Americans’ non-public healthcare knowledge.
UnitedHealth mentioned in a press release on Monday {that a} ransomware gang took recordsdata containing private knowledge and guarded well being data that it says could “cover a substantial proportion of people in America.”
The medical insurance large didn’t say what number of Americans are affected however mentioned the information assessment was “likely to take several 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 1000’s 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 Americans.
UnitedHealth mentioned 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 Americans’ well being knowledge comes every 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, revealed a number of recordsdata on its darkish internet 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 knowledge except 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 felony 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 put up alongside the revealed stolen knowledge that “we have the data and not 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 is not an official breach notification,” UnitedHealth mentioned.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the felony 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 every week earlier than deploying ransomware, permitting the hackers to steal vital 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 United States. For weeks, physicians, pharmacies and hospitals couldn’t confirm affected person advantages for shelling out medicines, organizing inpatient care, or processing prior authorizations mandatory for surgical procedures.
Much of the U.S. healthcare system floor to a halt, with healthcare suppliers dealing with 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 firm reported it made $99.eight billion in income through the first three months of the 12 months, faring higher than what Wall Street analysts had anticipated.
UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty, who acquired near $21 million in complete compensation the complete 12 months of 2022, is ready to testify to House lawmakers on May 1.
