On October 25, Lake Charles Memorial Health System (LCMH) in Louisiana received an email that began, “Ladies and gentlemen! Attention, please! This is Hive Ransomware Team.” The remainder of the email stated that Hive had been in LCMH’s network for 12 days and had exfiltrated 270 GB of files including patient and employee data. A…
Author: Dissent
Medibank defends decision to not pay hackers ransom for stolen data as it contacts 480,000 customers
Nassim Khadem and Daniel Ziffer report: Medibank’s boss says the company will begin directly communicating with nearly half a million customers whose health data is believed to have been stolen, weeks after it first became aware hackers had breached its customer database. Medibank’s chief executive David Koczkar said the company had today started communicating with…
Worok hackers hide new malware in PNGs, while ARCrypter ransomware expands reach from Latam to world
Two reports related to malware: Bill Toulas reports: A threat group tracked as ‘Worok’ hides malware within PNG images to infect victims’ machines with information-stealing malware without raising alarms. This has been confirmed by researchers at Avast, who built upon the findings of ESET, the first to spot and report on Worok’s activity in early…
Five Former Methodist Hospital Employees Charged with HIPAA Violations
Criminal prosecutions under HIPAA are still relatively rare. Here’s one reported by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Tennessee on November 10: Memphis, TN – A federal grand jury has indicted five former Methodist Hospital employees for conspiring with Roderick Harvey, 40, to unlawfully disclose patient information in violation of the Health Insurance…
AU: Legal Aid ACT won’t pay hackers’ ransom demands
Lottie Twyford reports: Legal Aid ACT has confirmed it will not pay the ransom demanded by the hackers who earlier this month stole private information from the commission. That hack could have exposed the data of some of the organisation’s most vulnerable clients, including refugees and victims of family violence. Read more at The Riot…
MI: Ransomware attack responsible for shutdown affecting Jackson, Hillsdale schools
Martin Slagter reports: Jackson County Intermediate School District officials took network systems offline after technology staff determined suspicious activity to be the result of a “ransomware incident.” Public school districts in both counties canceled classes Monday, Nov. 14, with the system outage impacting a wide range of building operations including but not limited to heating,…