A press release from medical technology firm LivaNova PLC indicates that patients of LivaNova U.S. are being notified of a breach first disclosed in November of 2023. An investigation at the time indicated that their systems were first accessed without authorization on or around October 26, 2023, but it was not until April 10, 2024 that they learned that personal information of U.S. patients was also involved.
The information varied by individual but may have included name, contact information (e.g., phone number, email and postal addresses), Social Security number, date of birth, medical information (e.g., treatment, condition, diagnosis, prescription, physician, medical record number and device serial number), and health insurance information.
They do not disclose how many U.S. patients have been affected or why it took more than four months to discover patients were affected. The incident has not yet appeared on HHS’s public breach tool.
Ransomware Attacks
Although they did not call it a ransomware attack in their press release, the LivaNova incident was claimed by LockBit on their leak site in December 2023. At the time, LockBit claimed to have acquired 2.2 TB of data from the firm and threatened to release it publicly if LivaNova did not pay. LivaNova’s press release makes no mention of any ransom or extortion demand or their response to any demand. DataBreaches has yet to determine whether LockBit ever released the LivaNova data or not, but LivaNova’s statement does not indicate whether they have scoured or continue to scour the dark web to see if any data has shown up.
The LockBit incident was not the first ransomware attack report involving LivaNova. In March 2021, Conti claimed to have successfully attacked them. At the time, Health IT Security reported that Conti leaked data, but from the reporting, it’s not clear whether U.S. patient data was included in that leak.
Update: LivaNova reported this to HHS on April 26 as impacting 180,000 patients.