8,257,376 Patient Records Held Hostage in Virginia
Posted 05/06/09 at 05:03:54 PM by Andy Salisbury
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On the 30th of last month, the secure site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program was swiftly replaced with an all text ransom demand. The asking price? $10 million US.
The ransom message (which can be found here, in a cached form) read, “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.”
No word yet on what the Virginian authorities plan to do about this one, but given the nature of this crime we doubt we’ll hear anything about its resolution.
Image Credit: WikiLeaks
This is Terrorism. I hope
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 7:28am
This is Terrorism. I hope the feds catch this person or persons and execute them. There needs to be a super high punishment for terrorism like this and I believe the death penalty as the punishment for 1st Degree Digital Terrorism. I hate people that do things like this and the only thing that's going to really put a dent in the underworld community is by killing the members of the underworld that engage is cyber terrorism. These fucks destroy lives and families. They destroy young peoples chances of a collage education and drive others to suicide and still others to commit crimes themselves such as bank robbery and things like that. People react differently to extreme circumstances like being ripped off and becomming extremely desperate.
So kill the fucks.You engage in Cyber terrorism like this, you die. You steal someones identity, you die. Because of the severity of the punishment guilt will have to be proven without a shadow of the doubt.
I would be happy to volunteer as the executioner. I can do it and sleep with ease at night. Scum bags like this have no place in society.
It's sad to see thing's happening this way
Submitted by Orionsword on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 7:27pm
It just point's out that no personal information can be secured by the technology we use makes you think how safe everything is on a computer connected to the internet consider everything to the stock market to the banking system is all connected and just thinking about it didn't visa get hacked into not to long ago.
Submitted by Muerte on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 11:33am
I guess none of you can imagine the time it tookto collect allthat information. The amount of money the tests costs that are going to have to be redone if its all lost. Not to mention the amount of chaos some of those records could cause to some families.
So 10 mil might not be so high as you think.
As for making that kind of information available to care givers? It would have saved my mother's toe. And it can be made secure. Well as secure as it is in a file cabinet anyways. Just takes money.
Submitted by crowboy on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 10:57pm
Hey lets have some fun and use his email address and sign him up for all sorts of porn and online offers!!!!
hackingforprofit@yahoo.com
Submitted by Zachary K. on Sat, 05/09/2009 - 4:16pm
ya think thats a good idea? he may do worse to you. you dont mess with that guy without using a e mail that is in no way connected to you, using a public computer. might trash your 401K or something.
You watch, hes already
Submitted by Denis63 on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 4:30am
You watch, hes already signed up for all of them.
Hahahah!
-Denis
Submitted by Velcrow on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 7:26pm
The problem with holding digital content for ransom is there is never a guarantee there isn't a copy. In fact, he probably did make a copy. First get the $10 million and give back the 'only' copy. Then turn around and sell off another copy to the black market. It's not like stealing the Mona Lisa or Hope diamond. The FBI has even LESS of a reason to approve paying this ransom than a normal one.
This fucker has balls, I'll
Submitted by I Jedi on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 5:50pm
This fucker has balls, I'll give him that... First he tells the whole state of Virgina to go fuck itself, then tells them their backups are fucked, and demands 10 million. Does he HONESTLY think he's going to get this 10 million dollars? No, seriously because this is quite a bold move and if he/she thinks they can get that money, then I really am pretty sure they'll never see a dime. This guy is way better off just giving back the information he stole without revealing his identity. They'll still look for him, but after awhile it should drop off.
Submitted by thegamepro on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 4:25pm
I live in VA and I have no Idea if anything could happen to me but $10 million sounds like a rip-off because Obama is going to post our health records online anyway so I really don't care anymore.
where in the world did that bit of imformation come from?
Submitted by jihnn on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 5:12pm
i would find it intersting to say the least to get a url or possibly some link as to where obama said he was releasing any kind of personal health info
would you be so kind as to let the rest of us know where you got it as it would be good reading
thanks
Submitted by Cyberdiver on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 9:02pm
The future of medical record keeping is to move everything digital and share amongst providers IE your records are going to be out on the net. Securely, but one never knows what can happen from day to day.
*grimace*
Submitted by Techrocket9 on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 4:11pm
I have to imagine, though, that it will/would be very hard to pull off the financial transaction anamyously. I doubt any bank anywhere would refuse ID info on a self-admitted criminal to a very mad US government (or even let the guy touch the money). Still, it's a bad break for Virginians. (I doubt they will ever recover the information) I'm glad I don't live there.
____________________________________________________
An army of pacifists can be defeated by one man with the will to fight.
Damn, I knew I shouldn't
Submitted by demosthenes on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 3:39pm
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have made "Which ED pill do you take because you're unable to get an erection?" my security question!
In all seriousness though, how is this info worth $10 million? There must be something I'm missing here, is the the SSNs?
.a nut for a jar of tunA
In the message it states
Submitted by Danduhman on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 4:19pm
In the message it states "Hell, if I can't move the prescription data at the very least I can find a buyer for the personal data (name,age,address,social security #, driver's license #)."
Oh no I'm from Virginia,
Submitted by dag1992 on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 3:38pm
Oh no I'm from Virginia, could this mean something for me? Probably not...
Submitted by tehR0XX0Rz on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 2:55pm
Will he be as cocky in federal prison, getting his backside pounded every night?
Forum topic
Submitted by CTskifreak on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 2:35pm
It was talked about here: http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=93054
Nobody surprised here!
Submitted by MyMojo on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 2:34pm
And Osama, I mean Obama, wants ALL of our fuckin' health records available on the Internet??
If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
Submitted by SwollenGoat on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 11:14am
I think Obama said he only wants to post records of people who share a common ancestor with monkeys, not people who were miraculously created from dirt. So you should be fine.
I find it strange that the current Presidential administration is keeping track of peoples sexual health records anyway.
Submitted by dude99 on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 2:24pm
One word. PWNED >_<. But seriously, that looks very um, not real.
Submitted by soccer1105 on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 2:55pm
i wish we had the same rules here as Gizmodo. You, sir, would be forever banned.
play nice
Submitted by plaskon on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 3:22pm
socc ... it was meant to be ironic.
as in to mock l33t speak.see "pwn3d" comment above.
Submitted by sedwards on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 6:36am
plaskon... it doesnt matter what you meant.
as in you're still annoying people by pointlessly posting "first post" (or equivalent) without anything in reference to the article in question or anyone elses comments.
putting "first post" (in l33t speak or not) doesn't mock those kinds of people in any way. they would just think someone else is just like them. you're just as bad as they are and i agree people should be banned for that (including what you did since theres no difference its still pointless and annoying). so you say play nice? i would actually ask that you play SMARTER.
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