- The Tech University Health Sciences Center in Texas and El Paso confirmed having suffered a cyber attack
- Data from 1.4 million people was extracted in the attack
- A threat actor called Interlock claimed responsibility for the attack.
Another major US hospital recently suffered a cyberattack and, as a result, lost sensitive data on more than a million patients.
In an announcement posted on their website, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (HSC) confirmed experiencing a “temporary interruption in some computer systems and applications.
Subsequent investigation confirmed that the outage was the result of a ransomware attack, in which “certain files and folders” were deleted from the HSCs network. The attack allegedly occurred on September 17 and was discovered more than a week later, on September 29.
Another hospital attacked
In the notice, it did not say how many people were affected or who the attackers were, but in a separate filing with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, it said the number was 1,465,000.
The HSC concluded that the criminals stole sensitive data such as people’s names, date of birth, address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, government-issued identification number, financial account information, health insurance information, and information including medical record numbers, billing/claims data, and diagnosis and treatment information.
The threat actor behind this attack is called Interlock and appears to be a relatively new ransomware operation, targeting high-profile organizations and demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom. The group recently added the HSC data to its leak website, where it showed 2.1 million files, totaling 2.6 terabytes.
To combat the attack, HSCs are reviewing existing security policies and procedures and implementing additional safeguards to improve system protection and monitoring, the announcement said. Out of an abundance of caution, the HSCs added, affected individuals are being offered free of charge credit monitoring services.
Through beepcomputer
