© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: The company emblem of the UnitedHealth Group seems on the aspect of one in every of their workplace buildings in Santa Ana, California, U.S., April 13, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Picture
By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A submit on a hacker discussion board fashionable with cybercriminals has claimed UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:) paid $22 million in a bid to recuperate entry to knowledge and techniques encrypted by the “Blackcat” ransomware gang, based on two researchers.
Neither UnitedHealth nor the hackers concerned have commented on the alleged ransom cost, however a cryptocurrency tracing agency partially corroborated the declare on Monday.
It isn’t unusual for big corporations which were victimized by ransomware gangs to resolve to pay the hackers to regain management of their networks, particularly in situations the place a big disruption to clients and companions occurred.
The discussion board submit, dated Sunday, mentioned a companion of Blackcat was answerable for the intrusion into UnitedHealth. The message, allegedly from the companion, included a hyperlink displaying that somebody had moved about 350 bitcoins, now value about $23 million as the worth of the cryptocurrency rises, from one digital foreign money pockets to a different.
The proprietor or homeowners of the respective wallets isn’t publicly accessible, however blockchain evaluation agency TRM Labs mentioned the vacation spot of the funds was “related to AlphV,” also called Blackcat, noting it had seen that tackle used to gather ransom funds from different AlphV victims.
Requested whether or not it had paid the ransom, UnitedHealth mentioned solely that it was “targeted on the investigation and the restoration.”
Blackcat has not responded to repeated messages from Reuters despatched over a number of days. Reuters couldn’t instantly decide how you can attain the purported companion hacker group or to entry the cybercrime discussion board the place the submit was made, though it was capable of view screenshots taken independently by two researchers, together with Recorded Future’s Dmitry Smilyanets.
The break-in at UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare (NASDAQ:) unit, which has sparked disruption throughout the USA, has been the thing of on-line intrigue. Blackcat claimed final week that it had stolen tens of millions of delicate information within the hack, solely to shortly delete its submit with out clarification.
In the meantime, the ache has continued to unfold throughout the U.S. medical system as Change Healthcare’s billing providers stay paralyzed. The American Medical Affiliation on Monday requested the Biden administration to make emergency funds accessible to physicians harm by the outage.
