Alegria Family Services (AFS) provides residential and community services to adults with developmental disabilities in New Mexico under a contract with the New Mexico Department of Health. They are not a large organization with vast resources, yet BianLian decided they would target them with a ransomware attack. Maybe they saw a ZoomInfo listing showing $7…
Category: Health Data
URLs Are NOT Passwords, and Sadly, That Needed to Be Said (Stolowitz vs. Nuance Communications)
In 2014, Nuance Communications discovered that anyone could access protected health information on one of its platforms. After the situation persisted for years, a former employee decided to submit a whistleblower complaint to HHS. For his efforts, he spent more than one year fending off threatened federal hacking charges, even though no hacking was involved….
Iran-linked hackers release Mossad chief’s medical records, personal photos
JNS reports: Hackers linked to Iran have published personal photos and medical records of Mossad intelligence agency chief David Barnea, Israeli media reported on Sunday. The hackers reportedly accessed the cellular phone of Barnea’s wife, according to I24 News. The stolen files were released on the eve of the Mossad director’s visit to Washington, D.C., for…
Bits ‘n Pieces, Saturday morning edition
In February 2022, NFL’s San Francisco 49ers confirmed a ransomware attack by BlackByte. This week they started mailing notification letters to more than 20,000 people. * * * In a bizarre incident, hackers broke into the ride-hailing service provider Yandex Taxi’s software and sent dozens of cars to the same location, resulting in a traffic…
Medical billing service in Florida one of the latest victims of ransomware attacks
Add NCG Medical to business associates who a ransomware attack has compromised. The medical billing service in Florida was added to the Hive ransomware group’s leak site on August 31, with Hive claiming that they encrypted NCG’s files on August 19. The 12-day gap between encryption and publicly revealing the attack is a relatively short…
Police ‘negotiating with hackers’ who hit Paris hospital computer system
Adam Sage reports: An elite French police unit is reportedly negotiating with hackers demanding a seven-figure ransom after paralysing the computer system of a Paris region hospital. Le Parisien newspaper said the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), the French military police unit that specialises in terrorism, hostage-taking and other such crimes, was involved in…