The one factor scarier than America’s privatized healthcare system is America’s privatized healthcare system getting hacked. Properly, I’ve dangerous information—Lake Charles Memorial Well being System in Louisiana has been the topic of a ransomware assault, doubtlessly affecting lots of of 1000’s of sufferers.
Lake Charles Memorial Well being System is a hospital community situated in Southern Louisiana that’s house to 6 medical services with over 400 beds to offer care to the residents of the state. The hospital system introduced lately that it was the topic of a ransomware assault this previous October, and has begun the method of notifying these concerned—a breach report from the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers estimates that 269,752 people had been affected.
“On October 21, 2022, LCMHS’s data safety crew detected uncommon exercise involving our laptop community. We took quick motion to comprise the exercise and examine its trigger. On October 25, 2022, we realized that an unauthorized third celebration gained entry to our community,” the hospital system wrote in a assertion printed on its web site. “The investigation decided that the unauthorized entry to our laptop community occurred between October 20 and October 21, 2022, throughout which period the unauthorized third celebration accessed or obtained sure information from our methods.”
LCMHS means that a few of the information which will have been obtained embrace affected person names, addresses, dates of beginning, medical report/affected person ID numbers, medical insurance data, cost data, and data on affected person care within the system. In some instances, Social Safety numbers had been additionally swiped.
In keeping with Bleeping Laptop, a hacker group often known as Hive allegedly listed LCMHS as a goal on the group’s web site in November 2022 whereas claiming the hack passed off on October 25, not October 21 because the hospital claimed. Hive is not any stranger to ransomware, as TechCrunch reported final month that the group has extorted almost $100 million from 1,300 victims because it was first noticed in motion in June 2021.