University of Missouri Health Care (MU Health Care) has today disclosed a breach that occurred in September 2019. According to a notification on their site, on September 21, 2019, they became aware that the email accounts of some students who had been seen by their health care system had been accessed without authorization. Those email accounts included the patients’ names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, health insurance information, and limited treatment and/or clinical information, such as diagnostic and/or medication information and, for a small number of individuals, a Social Security number.
The compromise occurred after an unrelated third party was breached and the threat actors used the login credentials they had obtained from that attack to engage in a credential stuffing attack on the U. Missouri student email addresses. Only those students who had reused their login credentials on both their university account and the third party account were affected. This was not a breach of the university or the university healthcare system (although would 2FA have prevented this?).
The university’s investigation revealed that the unauthorized access began on September 19, 2019.
They do not explain why it took them until May 5 to identify all the patients who needed to be notified, or how many patients were impacted. It’s also not clear whether there are other UM students who had their email accounts compromised this way but were not patients at the health care center.
The university writes, “We have no indication that individuals’ information was actually viewed by the unauthorized individual(s), or that it has been misused. However, out of an abundance of caution, MU Health Care mailed notification letters to those patients whose information was identified in the accounts.” They have also created a dedicated call center and are offering complimentary credit monitoring and identity protection services to those whose SSN were involved.
h/t, The Missourian