More than five months after discovering an attack that disrupted access to some of its IT systems, Kootenai Health is sending notification letters to 464,088 patients, employees, and employees’ dependents.
Kootenai Health describes itself as providing a comprehensive range of medical services to patients in north Idaho, eastern Washington, Montana and the Inland Northwest at several facility locations. In a sample notification letter submitted to the Maine Attorney General on behalf of Kootenai Health and its subsidiaries Kootenai Clinic, Kootenai Outpatient Surgery and Kootenai Outpatient Imaging (collectively “Kootenai Health”), they write:
On March 2, 2024, Kootenai Health became aware of unusual activity that disrupted access to certain IT systems. Upon discovering this activity, we took steps to secure our digital environment. We also engaged leading cybersecurity experts to assist with an investigation and to determine whether personal information may have been accessed or acquired without authorization. The investigation revealed that an unknown actor may have gained unauthorized access to certain data from the Kootenai Health network on or about February 22, 2024.
The types of information may include names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license or government-issued identification numbers, medical record numbers, medical treatment and condition details, medical diagnoses, medication information and health insurance information.
Kootenai’s website version of the notice has two sentences of note that the template sent to Maine omits:
To date, Kootenai Health is not aware of any attempt to misuse any of the information potentially involved in this incident.
and
While we are not aware of the misuse of any affected individual’s information, we are providing the following information to help those who want to know more about steps they can take to protect themselves and their personal information:
What We Still Don’t Know
DataBreaches initially contacted Kootenai Health on March 25 after threat actors known as ThreeAM (3am) listed them on their dark web leak site on March 24 but without any proof that they had acquired data from Kootenai. No reply from Kootenai was received, but on April 3, Kootenai Health issued a press release.
DataBreaches called Kootenai Health twice earlier today to ask some questions, but they did not return the calls by publication. Here are the questions we had for them:
1. Kootenai’s notice mentioned disrupted access. Were any patient files or employee files encrypted?
2. Did Kootenai negotiate with the 3am attackers at all?
3. Kootenai’s notification does not mention that 3am dumped 9.5 gb of files. What is in those files?
4. Do they believe patients and employees should be told if 3am dumped their personal data on the internet?
5. Has HHS been notified of this breach? No notice has appeared on HHS as of publication.
6. How many of the 464,088 people affected were patients, including employees or their dependents who may have received medical services from the system or health insurance?