Issued on 11/21/2024 | Posted on 11/25/2024 | Report number: A-18-21-08014 To cut to the chase: What OIG Found OCR fulfilled its requirement under the HITECH Act to perform periodic HIPAA audits. However: OCR’s HIPAA audit implementation was too narrowly scoped to effectively assess ePHI protections and demonstrate a reduction of risks within the health care sector. Specifically: OCR’s audits consisted…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Ransomware: Hunters International decentralizes storage
Reporting this via a Google translation of an article originally published in French. Valéry Rieß-Marchive reports: The brand provides its affiliates with Linux software allowing them to maintain complete control over the data stolen from their victims. The file is called “storage_linux_x64.” It is an executable for Linux. It is among the data of two…
Rockford Gastroenterology Associates notifies 147,253 patients of December 2023 cyberattack
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…
Ransomware Group Cooperation: A Growing Challenge in the Fight Against Cybercrime
Marco A. De Felice (aka @amvinfe) of SuspectFile and DataBreaches have often shared information with each other about threat actors or incidents, including what may appear to be second attacks or maybe just a re-listing of a previous attack. He has recently taken a look at listings of data claimed by two or more groups to…
Attackers Targeting VPNs Account for 28.7 Percent of Ransomware Incidents in Q3 According to Corvus Insurance Cyber Threat Report
A press release from Corvus Insurance has some statistics worth mulling over: Corvus Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Travelers Companies, Inc., today released its Q3 2024 Cyber Threat Report, The Ransomware Ecosystem is Increasingly Distributed, which showed that attackers leveraging virtual private network (VPN) vulnerabilities and weak passwords for initial access contributed to nearly 30% of…
Hibernation is Over? Akira Ransomware: Published Over 30 New Victims on their DLS (updated)
Adi Bleih reports: The Akira ransomware group has been active since March 2023, targeting diverse industries across North America, the UK, and Australia. Operating as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, Akira employs a double-extortion strategy by stealing sensitive data before encrypting it. According to their leak site, the group claims to have compromised over 350 organizations….