'Hacker' threatens to expose health data, demands $10M
Days after a hacker claimed to have broken into a database and encrypted millions of prescription records at Virginia's Department of Health Professions, it remains unclear what happened.
Whistleblower Web site Wikileaks.org last Sunday carried a report from an anonymous poster who said that the secure site for Virginia's Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) had been broken into by a hacker making a US$10 million ransom demand.
The alleged ransom note posted on the Virginia PMP site claimed that the hacker had backed up and encrypted more than 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions and then deleted the original data.
"Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh," the hacker is supposed to have said in his note, a copy of which was available on Wikileaks. "For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password," for decrypting the data, the supposed hacker wrote.
The expletive-laden note goes on to say that authorities have seven days to decide if they will "pony up" the money. If the ransom is not paid, "I'll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid," the note says.
The hacker admits that while he is unsure about the worth of the data or who would want it, "I'm bettin' someone will. Hell, if I can't move the prescription data at the very least I can find a buyer for the personal data," the hacker said pointing to the fact that the data included patients' names, ages, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers.
A call seeking comment on the incident from the Virginia PMP program office was not immediately returned. A call to the Virginia State Police seeking confirmation on whether it is investigating the reported incident also was not immediately returned.
As of Wednesday, the main PMP Web site and all links on the site were unavailable.
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Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
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