Four months after law enforcement took down AlphV’s leak site and disrupted their operations, AlphV has not recovered.
The damage from law enforcement in December was one factor. Then, in March, a self-described affiliate claimed that AlphV had gotten a $22 million payment from Change Healthcare OPTUM but had taken the money, suspended the affiliate’s account, and kept all the money for themselves. The affiliate claimed that AlphV had locked the target, but it was the affiliate who had exfiltrated the data. The affiliate was quite clear that they still had Change Healthcare’s data.
Note: Change Healthcare has never responded to inquiries asking whether it ever paid the alleged payment and whether it ever received a decryption key. There was evidence of a payment in that amount to a wallet, but no confirmation as to who made that payment.
Things became even more confusing over the next 48 hours. AlphV posted a confusing explanation that didn’t pass the smell test. The Ramp administrator did not waste time and just banned them. Adding to the drama, a fake seizure notice appeared on AlphV’s leak site, they seemed to acknowledge they were exit-scamming, and their source code was put up for sale for $5 million.
A Devastating Attack May Become More Devastating
The attack on Change Healthcare impacted pharmacies, medical care facilities around the country, and patients. Despite emergency measures taken by Change Healthcare and the federal government to try to mitigate some of the crisis the attack caused, they still have not recovered fully.
Now Change Healthcare may have yet another problem. The affiliate who claimed to have 4 TB of their data has listed the situation on a dark web site and warns Change Healthcare that if they do not pay them, the data will go up for sale:
Change Healthcare’s most recent status update was on April 5, before the new leak site announcement.