Medical health 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 information.
UnitedHealth mentioned in an announcement on Monday {that a} ransomware gang took information containing private information and guarded well being data that it says might “cowl a considerable proportion of individuals in America.”
The medical insurance large didn’t say what number of Individuals are affected however mentioned the info evaluate was “prone 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 tons 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 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 Individuals’ well being information comes every 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, revealed a number of information on its darkish net leak website containing private details about sufferers throughout an array of paperwork, a few of which included inner information associated to Change Healthcare. RansomHub mentioned it will promote the stolen information 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 legal 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 put up alongside the revealed stolen information that “now we have the info and never ALPHV.”
In its assertion Monday, UnitedHealth acknowledged the publication of a number of the information however stopped wanting claiming possession of the paperwork. “This isn’t an official breach notification,” UnitedHealth mentioned.
The Wall Road Journal reported Monday that the legal 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 US. For weeks, physicians, pharmacies and hospitals couldn’t confirm affected person advantages for allotting drugs, 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 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 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 complete compensation the complete 12 months of 2022, is ready to testify to Home lawmakers on Could 1.
