A Texas-based hospital is said to have become a victim of ransomware outbreak in September this year which is said to have leaked patient data on a simultaneous note. The Altus Bay Hospital (ABH) is the healthcare organization in the discussion which released a detailed press statement on the incident yesterday.
ABH mentioned in its statement that on Sept 3, 2018, an unauthorized party gained access into the electronic systems of the hospital and infected it with Dharma Ransomware. The malware is said to have encrypted digital records pertaining to patient data. And the motive was to extract money as ransom in exchange for the decryption keys.
Sources from the hospital based on the condition of anonymity say that 8GB of data was compromised in the incident which includes patient names, home addresses, date of births, social security numbers, driving license info, credit card data and phone numbers along with few critical medical records.
In the second week of Sept, a detailed investigation was launched by the healthcare org which discovered that the data was simply encrypted, but showed no signs of unauthorized access. However, some reliable sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders say that the intruders did manage to access a portion of the encrypted info when they learned that the IT staff of the hospital was in no mood to entertain their ransom demands.
News is out that the ransomware was contained as soon as it was discovered and back up info was used to restore the encrypted patient records.
As of now, there is no info on the hackers dumping the accessed data onto the dark web.
Note 1- If the patients of Altus Bay Hospital feel something suspicious about the incident or desire to know more info, the details of the data breach are available on the official website.
Note 2- The affiliates of ABH include Altus Women’s Center of Baytown, LP, Oprex Surgery(Baytown), LP, Clarus Imaging (Baytown), LP, Clarus Imaging (Beaumont), LP, Serenity Baytown, LP, and Altus Radiation Oncology Baytown, LP.
