Medical Records Stolen As 1 Million Patients Hit By Healthcare Hack

By Davey Winder for Forbes
Sunday, February 2, 2025

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Although the Community Health Center attack is not thought to have been ransomware-related, the same cannot be said for the latest healthcare hack. As I reported Feb. 1, the New York Blood Center has been hit by ransomware scumbags who have disrupted the blood donation process of a major blood supplier to 200 hospitals with all the possible consequences that come with such an irresponsible action.

Dr. Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb and a Fellow at the British Computer Society, told me that healthcare will probably be the most desirable target for ransomware groups in 2025 for three key reasons. First is funding, with most healthcare organizations “surviving mostly thanks to governmental subsidies or charity donations,” Kolochenko said, “this makes healthcare institutions a low-hanging fruit for unscrupulous cybercriminals, who are unwilling to spend a lot of time and effort to pierce multilayered cyber defense of, say, wealthy financial institutions.” Then there’s the more likely to pay weakness that is introduced by the very nature of the business these organizations are in, where human life is more important than money. “Knowing this,” Kolochenko said, “ransomware groups usually start with a six- or even seven-digit bid, then significantly reduce it to something that the victim can pay, naively believing that it got a great deal.“ And finally, healthcare providers can handle very sensitive data of politicians, celebrities and wealthy executives, “making attacks against healthcare unprecedently lucrative compared to most other sectors,” Kolochenko concluded. Read Full Article