In one of the latest attacks on medical entities, AvosLocker has claimed that they exfiltrated 60 GB of data from “Moorfields NHS UK & Dubai.” So far, however, there is no evidence that any UK servers were hit — only Dubai ones.
Moorfields in a specialty eye hospital that is part of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). Located in London, Moorfields also has international locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
“Moorfields suffered a breach recently and they refused to pay,” AvosLocker wrote in a “press release” on their dedicated leak site. “This is a small sample of their files. We will release 60 GB+ of data in two weeks.”
The threat actors posted a screen cap showing some files from the Dubai hospital. They also posted some spread sheets from 2018 and 2019 containing ocularist appointments and billing information. At least one of them appeared to contain patient names and phone numbers.
“If they refuse to negotiate, we will leak all the data we’ve got,” the threat actors added.
DataBreaches.net reached out to Moorfields in London to inquire about the incident and was sent the following statement:
Moorfields Dubai has recently been subject of an IT security incident on some of its servers by cyber criminals.
We have been undertaking an urgent and thorough investigation to understand what happened. At this time, we do not believe patient health records have been compromised. However, some Dubai patient identification information was accessed. We take the privacy of our patients very seriously and we have contacted all affected patients to let them know about the incident.
Working with a leading cyber security specialist agency, we have also taken proactive measures to strengthen our network and website security.
In a follow-up email, their spokesperson confirmed that it was only the Dubai hospital’s servers that were hit, and not any UK servers. An inquiry that had also been sent to AvosLocker did not receive a reply by the time of this publication. This post may be updated if more information becomes available.