U.S. Dermatology Partners, which has over 100 locations across eight states, recently posted a notice of a data security incident on its website.
As stated in their notice:
On June 19, 2024, USDP experienced a network disruption. Upon detecting the incident, we quickly took steps to secure our network, immediately initiated our incident response processes and began an investigation with the assistance of external forensic experts. The investigation determined that an unauthorized party accessed our network and, on June 19, 2024, transferred certain files to an external destination.
“an external destination?” Do they mean a dark web leak site? Because that is where the data wound up, even though U.S. Dermatology Partners does not make that clear.
We conducted a comprehensive review and analysis of those files to determine what information they contained, which was recently completed on April 2, 2025.
The information involved varied by individual, but may include information such as names, dates of birth, medical record number, health insurance information, or information related to the dermatology services received at one of our managed practices. For a limited number of patients, Social Security and/or driver’s license numbers were also contained in the files involved.
How many patients, total, were affected? They do not disclose that in the notice, which wouldn’t be noteworthy if the number was already up on HHS’s public breach tool, but it’s not.
And why did it take so long for them to complete the analysis? Notification to individuals should have been made no longer than 60 calendar days from discovery of the breach. Why wasn’t it? They do not explain that, either.
Here are additional details about the incident that they do not mention:
In June 2024, DataBreaches noted that the BianLian ransomware gang claimed responsibility for an attack on U.S. Dermatology Partners. BianLian’s description of the 300 GB of data they claimed to have exfiltrated included personal information.
In August, BianLian leaked the data. But a check of HHS’s public breach tool in June and again in August of 2024 did not uncover any report by the entity to HHS about any breach affecting more than 500 patients. Was the breach so small that it did not require reporting to HHS within 60 days? Or was it so large that the entity could not figure out who was affected? The latter seemed more likely, but under those circumstances, the entity could have done what dozens of other entities have done: submit a “placeholder” report of 500 or 501 patients to HHS.
In September 2024, DataBreaches reported on the breach, noting, “U.S. Dermatology Partners, who allegedly was breached by BianLian earlier this year and had 300 GB of their files leaked in August, now has allegedly had 1.8 TB of files leaked by Black Basta. But is the data in Black Basta’s leak the same as what BianLian leaked?” DataBreaches could not draw any firm conclusions as to whether U.S. Dermatology Partners had suffered one breach or two.
U.S. Dermatology Partners never replied to this site’s inquiries submitted to them in August and again in September of 2024. The recent website notice does not mention any second breach, so it may be that Black Basta was attempting to extort the entity with the same data BianLian had acquired although it claimed to have 1.8 TB of files, which was a lot more than what BianLian claimed to have acquired.
As of publication today, there is still no listing on HHS’s public breach tool, so we still do not know how many patients, total, were affected by this incident, although on June 2, Oliver Street Dermatology Management LLC (which does business as U.S. Dermatology Partners) notified the Texas Attorney General’s Office 7,835 Texans were reportedly affected by an incident. Because Texas does not post the submissions, we cannot conclude that the report is definitely related to the 2024 breach, but it may be.
Black Basta’s site has been inactive since January and now appears offline. BianLian’s site has not updated since March and also appears offline. So where are the data, and what, if anything is being done with it now? U.S. Dermatology Partners’ notice states, “we are unaware of any misuse of patients’ information….” They do not state what steps or methods they have deployed to become aware of any possible misuse.
Once again, DataBreaches emailed USDP with questions about extortion demands by BianLian and Black Basta, and what steps USDP has taken and is taking to discover if there is any misuse of data. Once again, they did not reply.
At least a few law firms claim to be investigating the breach with an eye towards filing a potential class-action lawsuit. Perhaps we will get answers to the questions U.S. Dermatology Partners has ignored if and when a lawsuit gets to discovery.