Although DataBreaches does not report on all incidents involving U.S. healthcare entities, a log is kept to calculate statistics for the annual Breach Barometer report produced by Protenus, Inc. For the month of July, DataBreaches noted the following six U.S. hospitals disclosed breaches or were claimed as victims by threat actors. Some of these incidents…
Akshaya Asokan reports: A newly identified financially motivated hacking group is deploying Basta ransomware as part of an ongoing extortion campaign that began early this year. Google Mandiant, which uncovered the campaign, tracks the group as UNC4393. Since Basta is not publically marketed and is available on invitation-only basis, Mandiant researchers believe UNC4393 is likely the “primary…
Mathew J. Schwartz reports: The downfall of previously high-flying ransomware operations Alphv and LockBit has shaken up the criminal underground, turning some former affiliates into lone operators and causing some under-the-radar groups to rack up record extortion payments. Ransomware incident response firm Coveware said in a report that 10% of all ransomware attacks it monitored…
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee of HealthInfoSec poses a question about why Change Healthcare’s report to HHS indicated that 500 patients were affected when they already admitted that there were millions. Why use such a low placeholder instead of a higher number when it has been months since they discovered the breach and they must have some…
Lyann Danielak, Joshua Hutchinson, and Robin Reinertson of Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP write: On July 4, 2024, the B.C. Court of Appeal issued a duo of class action appeal decisions considering the potential scope of statutory and common law privacy claims against data custodians that fall victim to cyberattacks in data breach cases. In…
On July 29, the Department of Justice filed its opening brief in its appeal of Conor Fitzpatrick’s (“Pompompurin’s”) sentence. The issue at the appellate level is “whether the district court abused its discretion in sentencing Fitzpatrick to a 17-day time-served sentence for possessing child pornography and creating and operating the largest English-language data breach forum…