Government Technology

Cyber-Criminal Demands $10 Million Ransom After Breaching Virginia Medical Records


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May 7, 2009 By

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.


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