In December 2023, DataBreaches added Rockford Gastroenterology Associates (“RGA”) to a list of possible ransomware victims after seeing a listing for them on the leak site for threat actors known as RA World. However, it wasn’t until September 2024 that RGA posted a notice on its website, and not until October that they notified HHS that 147,253 patients were affected by the incident.
In December 2023, RA World claimed it had exfiltrated 45 GB of files and had posted a proof pack. They claimed that the files included
- Contracts
- Physician CVs & Bios
- Patient Accounts
- Medical Records
- Faxed Records
- Day End Reports
- Other files
When RGA didn’t pay them, the threat actors subsequently leaked all the data (56 GB) in a torrent.
But how much of that did RGA reveal?
RGA’s Disclosure of September 18, 2024
RGA’s substitute notice informs patients that their “investigation determined our electronic health records system was not affected by the incident. However, the investigation determined certain files and folders of unstructured data within the affected systems were accessed and/or acquired by an unauthorized party on or around December 16, 2023.”
The notice does not inform patients what kinds of protected health or personal information was acquired by the threat actors.
It does not tell them whether there had been a ransom demand, although it’s almost certain that there was one if they showed up on RA World’s list of entities that didn’t pay them.
And importantly, it does not tell patients that whatever data of theirs that had been acquired was leaked on the dark web and made freely available to everyone.
DataBreaches has not seen a copy of the individual notification letters mailed to patients. Those letters likely included more details specific to each patient as to what data of theirs was involved in the breach. But did it also tell patients that their data has been leaked and on the dark web for months already?