There has been another ransom attack on United Healthcare's Optum Subdivision monstrously large and interconnected—and now repeatedly ransomware attacked—Change Healthcare.
Readers will recall all of American Healthcare has been royally *&%@* by the ALPHV/Blackcat cyberattack on Change Healthcare.
Well, everything was fixed. Ok, that is a lie. Not only is everything not fixed, but Change has been, predictably, attacked again by, in theory, another group of hackers.
Russian language criminals use the naming conventions of tech companies circa 2001, so they have a site called, and I am not kidding, RansomHub. As reported in The Register…
RansomHub claimed responsibility for attacking Change Healthcare in the last few hours, saying it had 4 TB of the company's data containing personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to active US military personnel and other patients, medical records, payment information, and more.
The miscreants are demanding a ransom payment from the healthcare IT business within 12 days or its data will be sold to the highest bidder.
"Change Healthcare and United Health you have one chance in protecting your clients data," RansomHub said. "The data has not been leaked anywhere and any decent threat intelligence would confirm that the data has not been shared nor posted.
"In the event you fail to reach a deal the data will be up for sale to the highest bidder here."
I hate to say I completely predicted this, but, I absolutely and completely predicted this. First off, this fulfills the House of God Rule #8: They Can Always Hurt You More.
I detailed the nature of the change healthcare attack number one here. The American Prospect did real coverage of the story here.
I imagined a hilarious town hall with the frustrated cybercriminals here. And I pre-penned an open letter to cyber criminals attempting to extort Optum here.
This, to be clear, will keep happening. It’s in UnitedHealth Group’s (fiscal) interest. They are a legal bank that can make ungodly interest on not being able to pay out claims…it would require fines from the DOJ at a scale I highly doubt they are willing to levy.
More news as it breaks. Regulators? Buckle up. The rest of us, buckle up too. That is our personal health information that is about to be sold to the dark web.
Ransom Olds- inventor and namesake of the Oldsmobile, and devisor of the assembly line concept.
As a public service to all of you, I will now publish my health information, in order to reduce the value of any further ransom attacks on any healthcare entity.