Alberta’s privacy commissioner is investigating after a computer virus hit Alberta Health Services and patient files were compromised.
The virus, a new variant of a trojan horse program called Coreflood, was active from May 15 to 29, before it was detected and removed from the Edmonton network.
Coreflood is “designed to steal data from an infected computer and send it to a server controlled by a hacker,” said a privacy commissioner release.
Patients whose health information was accessed in Netcare – Alberta’s electronic health record – through an infected computer and employees who accessed personal banking and email accounts from work using an infected computer are at risk, said the commissioner’s office.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is sending letters to the 11,582 patients whose information may have been compromised and has notified all affected employees.
Source: Edmonton Sun.