VIRGINIA STATE MEDICAL DATABASE HACKED!
ChristsNemesis
the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the
return of the records."
Personal Technology News - Cyber-Security Special Report
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"Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demand
Ransom!"
By Brian Krebs
May 4, 2009; 6:39 PM ET
Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by
pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on
more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a
ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records,
according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for
leaked documents.
Wikileaks reports that the Web site for the Virginia Prescription
Monitoring Program was defaced last week with a message claiming that
the database of prescriptions had been bundled into an encrypted,
password-protected file.
Wikileaks has published a copy of the ransom note left in place of the
PMP home page, a message that claims the state of Virginia would need
to pay the demand in order to gain access to a password needed to
unlock those records:
"I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378
patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made
an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for
Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10
million, I will gladly send along the password."
The site, along with a number of other Web pages related to Virginia
Department of Health Professions, remains unreachable at this time.
Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of Virginia's Department of Health
Professions, declined to discuss details of the hacker's claims, and
referred inquires to the FBI.
"There is a criminal investigation under way by federal and state
authorities, and we take the information security very serious," she
said.
A spokesman for the FBI declined to confirm or deny that the agency
may be investigating.
Whitley Ryals said the state discovered the intrusion on April 30,
after which time it shut down Web site site access to dozens of pages
serving the Department of Health Professions. The state also has
temporarily discontinued e-mail to and from the department pending the
outcome of a security audit, Whitley Ryals said.
"We do have some of systems restored, but we're being very careful in
working with experts and authorities to take essential steps as we
proceed forward," she said. "Only when the experts tell us that these
systems are safe and secure for being live and interactive will that
restoration be complete."
She added that the department does have a page online at www.dhp.virginia.gov
that lists the phone and fax numbers for various state health boards,
and that the state would continue issuing health care licenses and
investigating violations of the law or regulations of state health
licensees.
This is the second major extortion attack related to the theft of
health care data in the past year. In October 2008, Express Scripts,
one of the nation's largest processors of pharmacy prescriptions,
disclosed that extortionists were threatening to disclose personal and
medical information on millions of Americans if the company failed to
meet payment demands. Express Scripts is currently offering a $1
million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of
the individual(s) responsible for trying to extort money from the
company.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/hackers_break_into_virginia_he.html