May 7, 2009, By Hilton Collins, Staff Writer
The FBI and the Virginia State Police are on the hunt for a malicious hacker who breached millions of medical records last week and is now threatening to sell them unless someone forks over $10 million.
The breach was originally reported on WikiLeaks, a site that publishes and comments on reports of leaked documents. According to the site, when people logged on to the Web site of the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program on April 30, they saw a ransom note containing the following information:
"I have your s@*t! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(
"For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password. You have 7 days to decide. If by the end of 7 days, you decide not to pony up, I'll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid."
The note's author threatened to sell the information to the highest bidder if the money isn't turned over.
Thursday was the purported deadline for the ransom.
The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program Web site, which pharmacists use to track drug prescriptions to monitor narcotics abuse, is currently offline while authorities investigate the problem, the Daily Mail reported Thursday.
ABC 7 News also reported Thursday that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine told The Associated Press that he was infuriated by the acts and that the state won't make the payments.
Health officials called the FBI after viewing the ransom demand on the Web site last week.
If more than 8 million patient records are up for grabs, this could be a spectacularly huge problem for most of Virginia's residents. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Virginia was home to 7.8 million people in 2008.
Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Virginia Department of Health Professions, told the Daily Mail that her department is satisfied that all the data was properly backed up.
MJ
Read real world deployments of technology in government from our sponsors.
View All Industry SolutionsCan your organization keep pace with its growing demands while enforcing security controls?
Forrester conducted interviews with CIOs/CTOs of mainframe users in the US and Europe to better understand their strategies in the use of the mainframe.
Fully capitalize on the potential value offered by the mainframe as the availability of mainframe professionals becomes increasingly constrained.
Mainframe 2.0 is CA’s new and far-reaching initiative that is changing the way the mainframe is managed forever.
Read this to learn about the technology and best practices needed to manage your identities throughout their lifecycle.
This paper discusses the drivers, responses and challenges associated with information security in Government.
Find solutions that simplify, automate and secure the activities for creating and modifying user identities and roles throughout the organization.
Government agencies use virtualized environments to decrease costs, consolidate data centers and reduce environmental impacts.
CA Virtualization Management solutions provide integrated end-to-end management, automation and security which drive better outcomes.
VMware and CA have responded to your requirements by forging a solid partnership focused on your enterprise's needs.
Using project management at every stage of grant administration can maximize funds now and for the future.
The sheer size of ARRA and new grant opportunities has had a tremendous impact on the workload of grants management staff. But the size of the program is only part of the story.
Decision-makers need to align IT projects with organizational goals. See how three agencies achieved this.
Browse hundreds of public sector career opportunities in GovTech's new jobs section. Popular job searches: government IT, public safety, GIS, transportation, CIO, security, health
Latest Government Technology News