Incidents involving malware or ransomware. In some cases, incidents called “ransomware” do not involve any locking but merely hack, exfiltrate, and attempt to extort.
Alleged LockBit Developer Created and Operated Most Prolific Ransomware Variant Under Aliases “LockBit” and “LockBitSupp”; U.S State Department Offers Reward Up to $10M; U.S. Department of Treasury Designates LockBit Administrator for Sanctions The U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges today against a Russian national for his alleged role as the creator, developer, and administrator of the […]
Marco A. De Felice reports: Another significant data breach looms for United Healthcare (UHC), involving patient documents belonging to its Optum financial assistance program and its subsidiary Change Healthcare. In recent hours, the ransomware group Medusa has claimed on its website, within Tor networks, the cyberattack on the servers of Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health (NEON), a company providing healthcare services headquartered in Cleveland, […]
Data Breach Today reports: A Midwest operator of nursing homes has filed for bankruptcy, citing the effects of a ransomware attack last fall and fallout from the recent Change Healthcare outage as factors that contributed to its financial woes. See Also: Take Inventory of Your Medical Device Security Risks SC Healthcare Holdings LLC, which operates as […]
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a “Dear Colleague” letter addressing the cybersecurity incident impacting Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealthcare Group (UHG), and many other health care entities. The cyberattack is disrupting health care and billing information operations nationwide and poses a direct threat to […]
The attack on United Healthcare’s Change Healthcare unit continues to cause major problems. Pharmacies are struggling to fill prescriptions, patients cannot get their medications, and payment processes for providers are impacted. The problems began February 21 after hackers, subsequently identified as the AlphV (BlackCat) group, gained access to UnitedHealth’s Change Healthcare unit. How they gained […]
DataBreaches.net reports: On February 16, BlackCat added loanDepot to their dark web leak site, but without any data as proof. At the time, they claimed that LoanDepot had shown up in the negotiation chat, and had offered $6 million for the data and a decryptor, but allegedly claimed they could offer more after the weekend. […]
For years now, law enforcement has been urging victims of ransomware attacks not to pay ransom. Their explanations are simple: (1) criminals do not keep their word to delete any data they have stolen from you, (2) criminals will not keep their word not to attack you again, and (3) paying criminals encourages them to […]
HHS generally does not rush to issue any notice about a cyberattack, but today, they issued a quick one about Change Healthcare: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is aware that a cyber incident was identified in Optum Insight’s Change Healthcare’s technology systems on February 21. HHS is working closely with Optum Insight […]
Some ransomware gangs demand millions of dollars in ransom or even tens of millions of dollars. Even smaller businesses, non-profit organizations, and public school districts have increasingly become victims of cyberattacks because they are easy targets with poor defenses against attackers. Do you want your system unlocked? Do you want your data back or deleted […]
‘I don’t see it happening’: CISA chief dismisses ban on ransomware payments
Despite some calls to ban ransomware payments in hopes that criminals will abandon financially motivated ransomware attacks, finding a way to get everyone to comply with any such ban has seemed challenging, to say the least, and there has been a lot of pushback. Now, one more expert with clout has suggested that the idea […]