A wise-ass hacker has broken into the Virginia Department of Health Professionals, and is demanding $10 million in ransom for the return of the stolen information. According to Wikileaks.org, the hacker stole the data, encrypted it, and posted the following ransom not on the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website:
“I have your shit. In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh 
For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”
Virginia DHP isn’t providing any further information about the data breach, but the website is still down and email service into and out of the department has been discontinued, and will remain so until a security audit is complete, according to Sandra Whitley Ryals, the DHP director.
“We do have some of systems restored, but we’re being very careful in working with experts and authorities to take essential steps as we proceed forward,” she said. “Only when the experts tell us that these systems are safe and secure for being live and interactive will that restoration be complete.”
Express Scripts, one of the nation’s largest prescription processors, was attacked last fall by hackers demanding ransom. At the time, the attack seemed unique, but Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md., based computer security training group, said cyber and data extortion incidents rarely make the news because most victims find it more expedient to simply pay up.
“There are thousands of companies that have already paid off extortionists in return for not having their customers’ data exposed,” Paller said. “This especially true in the financial industry, as some banks are now getting more than one new extortion demand per day.”
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2 Comments
All of this sounds bad, but the thing about banks getting demands everyday, and thousands have paid is shocking!
I never heard of the Express Scripts thing. We’ll probably never know whose info was stolen. No wonder there are so many victims.