Information Technology Security

By Lawrence Abrams,  Bleeping Computer UnitedHealth has confirmed for the first time what types of medical and patient data were stolen in the massive Change Healthcare ransomware attack, stating that data breach notifications will be mailed in July. On Thursday, the company published a data breach notification warning that the ransomware attack exposed a "substantial quantity of data" for a "substantial proportion of people in America." While UnitedHealth has not explicitly shared how many people were affected, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty stated during a congressional hearing that "maybe a third" of all American's health data was exposed in the attack. According to the data breach notification, a massive trove of sensitive information was stolen, including: Health insurance information (such as primary, secondary or other health plans/policies, insurance companies, member/group ID numbers, and Medicaid-Medicare-government payor ID numbers); Health i...

By Lawrence Abrams,  Bleeping Computer The RansomHub extortion gang has begun leaking what they claim is corporate and patient data stolen from United Health subsidiary Change Healthcare in what has been a long and convoluted extortion process for the company. In February, Change Healthcare suffered a cyberattack that caused massive disruption to the US healthcare system , preventing pharmacies and doctors from billing or sending claims to insurance companies. The attack was ultimately linked to the BlackCat / ALPHV ransomware operation, who later said they stole 6 TB of data during the attack . After facing increased pressure from law enforcement, the BlackCat gang shut down their operation . This occurred amid claims they were pulling an exit scam by stealing a $22 million Change Healthcare ransom payment from the affiliate who conducted the attack. While Change Healthcare has declined to comment on whether it has paid a ransom, the affiliate known as "Notchy" said they ...

By Bill Toulas, Bleeping Computer Optum's Change Healthcare has started to bring systems back online after suffering a crippling BlackCat ransomware attack last month that led to widespread disruption to the US healthcare system. United Health Group (UHG) is the largest American health insurance company, and its subsidiary, Optum Solutions, operates the Change Healthcare platform. Change Healthcare operates the largest payment exchange platform between doctors, pharmacies, healthcare providers, and patients in the US. On February 21, 2024, Optum Solutions suffered a ransomware attack by ALPHV/BlackCat, causing extensive outages after servers were allegedly encrypted and the company shut down its IT systems. These outages led to wide disruption at pharmacies and doctor offices, which could not send claims, causing some patients to pay full price for their medications. Today, UHG released a statement that finally delivered some good news, announcing the electronic prescription syst...

By Sergiu Gatlan,  Bleeping Computer The BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang has officially claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Optum , a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (UHG), which led to an ongoing outage affecting the Change Healthcare platform . Change Healthcare is the largest payment exchange platform used by more than 70,000 pharmacies across the United States. UHG is the world's largest healthcare company by revenue, employing 440,000 people worldwide and working with over 1.6 million physicians and care professionals in 8,000 hospitals and other care facilities. In a statement published on their dark web leak site today, BlackCat said that they allegedly stole 6TB of data from Change Healthcare's network belonging to "thousands of healthcare providers, insurance providers, pharmacies, etc." "Being inside a production network one can imagine the amount of critical and sensitive data that can be found. The data relates to all Change Health clients tha...

By Zack Whittaker,  Tech Crunch An ongoing cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare that sparked outages and disruption to hospitals and pharmacies across the U.S. for the past week was caused by ransomware. A healthcare executive with knowledge of the incident, who was on the call briefed by the company’s executives, said the healthcare tech giant attributed the cyberattack to the BlackCat ransomware group . Reuters first reported the news linking the cyberattack to BlackCat, citing two people familiar with the incident. A spokesperson for Change Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment. BlackCat, also often referred to as ALPHV , has not yet publicly claimed responsibility for the cyberattack. Ransomware and extortion gangs typically publish portions of a victim’s stolen data to extort a ransom demand. Ransomware attacks typically scramble a victim’s files and demand a ransom to receive the decryption key. Newer cyberattacks often invol...

By Bill Toulas,  Bleeping Computer Healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group confirmed that its subsidiary Optum was forced to shut down IT systems and various services after a cyberattack by “nation-state” hackers on the Change Healthcare platform. United Health Group (UHG) is a health insurance company with a presence across all 50 US states. The organization is the world's largest healthcare company by revenue ($324.2 billion in 2022), employing 440,000 people worldwide. Its subsidiary, Optum Solutions, operates the Change Healthcare platform, which is the largest payment exchange platform between doctors, pharmacies, healthcare providers, and patients in the US healthcare system. Optum suffers massive cyberattack Change Healthcare first started warning customers Wednesday that some of its services had become unavailable, later stating a cybersecurity incident caused it. An 8-K filing submitted by UnitedHealth Group with the SEC yesterday confirmed that a cyberattack by suspected ...