Slashdot: Ransomware Attack On US Dental Insurance Giant Exposes Data of 9 Million Patients

Ransomware Attack On US Dental Insurance Giant Exposes Data of 9 Million Patients
Published on June 01, 2023 at 02:50AM
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An apparent ransomware attack on one of America's largest dental health insurers has compromised the personal information of almost nine million individuals in the United States. The Atlanta-based Managed Care of North America (MCNA) Dental claims to be the largest dental insurer in the nation for government-sponsored plans covering children and seniors. In a notice posted on Friday, the company said it became aware of "certain activity in our computer system that happened without our permission" on March 6 and later learned that a hacker "was able to see and take copies of some information in our computer system" between February 26 and March 7, 2023. The information stolen includes a trove of patients' personal data, including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver's licenses or other government-issued ID numbers. Hackers also accessed patients' health insurance data, including plan information and Medicaid ID numbers, along with bill and insurance claim information. In some cases, some of this data pertained to a patient's "parent, guardian, or guarantor," according to MCNA Dental, suggesting that children's personal data was accessed during the breach. According to a data breach notification filed with Maine's attorney general, the hack affected more than 8.9 million clients of MCNA Dental. That makes this incident the largest breach of health information of 2023 so far, after the PharMerica breach that saw hackers access the personal data of almost 6 million patients. The LockBit ransomware group took responsibility for the cyberattack and published 700GB of files after the company refused to pay a $10 million ransom demand.

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