Hackers demand $10M in ransom after hijacking millions of Virginia medical records

Daily Mail ^ | 5/7/2009 | Daily Mail

[Samizdat]

Hackers have demanded $10 million in ransom after hijacking nearly 8.3 million patient records. The data was stolen from an a government website used to track drug prescriptions in the American state of Virginia. Health officials called in the FBI after receiving a ransom demand which was posted on the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program's website

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1178276/Hackers-demand--10m-ransom-hijacking-millions-medical-records.html#ixzz0aRMtmyP9

[Samizdat]

This is what you get when you centralize medical records into a widespread database. Your hospital is probably doing this as we sit. We need to individually call our hospitals and demand that our records be pulled back to a local VPN or FTP and not allowed to be accessed by the entire medical population, not to mention people offshore who are doing the typing. Its also funny how this doesn't seem to have gotten any traction in this country.

[Glenn]

What was the outcome?

[Da Coyote]

“...The data was stolen from an a government website used to track drug prescriptions in the American state of Virginia. ...”

Let us remember that no matter how incompetent the capitalist market can be, government always, always, ALWAYS is worse.

Where do you think the capitalist failures go?

(Besides the Kenyan Klod Kabinet, of course.)

[ColdOne]

Its also funny how this doesn't seem to have gotten any traction in this country.

Yes once again we find this out in foreign media.This should be (once again) all over the news. WAIT......Tiger is on his yatch?!?

[Samizdat]

My next step is to call the governor’s office and ask what the outcome was. I just ran across this while trying to find out what the outcome was about an India transcription company selling medical records.

[SengirV]

Wait what? Tiger on a yacht? Where?

[rarestia]

This is what you get when you centralize medical records into a widespread database. Your hospital is probably doing this as we sit. We need to individually call our hospitals and demand that our records be pulled back to a local VPN or FTP and not allowed to be accessed by the entire medical population, not to mention people offshore who are doing the typing. Its also funny how this doesn't seem to have gotten any traction in this country.

LMAO! My organization uses Cerner for EMR (Elec Med Record), and they're based in Kansas. We're in Florida. Everyday hundred of gigs of data goes from Florida to Kansas for storage in Cerner's multi-acre datacenter.

If you think your medical records are safe, I think you'd be surprised where they end up. Since the late 90's, most organizations have done some sort of electronic recordkeeping of your visits to their facilities with myriad software programs. Today's EMR is a fully-consolidated feature software.

The old systems are phased out, but even I have servers that are ten years old holding medical transcription information and radiological records. It would just take one breach for thousands of peoples' lives to be ruined. Pray your local hospital has a strong IT Security department!

[rarestia]

Oh, and as far as telecommuting, it's much bigger than you think! This last semester I researched telecommuting in major industry around the globe, and I found that an overwhelming number of organizations in the US and abroad are utilizing and supporting employee use of VPN, remote desktop, and telecommuting options. There's virtually no overhead except the capital expenditure for server and networking hardware. After that, the software is cheap and easy to use.

Telecommuting is estimated to occur in over half of American homes, but there are still many stigma attached to the practice, especially in the US. In Japan, the ability to telecommute has reduced congestion in major cities. My only question, and this may be my Master's thesis subject, is what happens when a majority of workers are remote and a network crash or globally-concentrated hacking attempt disconnects those workers? Industries would lose a lot of money with a disconnect of any magnitude.

This EMR theft is going to become more common. Just watch.

[Samizdat]

Did you see the movie “The Postman” with Kevin Costner? Its about a global tech failure and about him going around trying to delivery years old mail to the intended recipients. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.