GenRx Pharmacy Ransomware Attack Resulted In Data Breach

A huge cyberattack affecting the American GenRx Pharmacy potentially resulted in a data breach. The incident affected hundreds of thousands of patients exposing their health data.

GenRx Pharmacy Data Breach

Through a recent press release, GenRx Pharmacy, a healthcare facility headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, has disclosed a data breach. The pharmacy has blamed a ransomware attack for the breach that hit its network lately.
Specifically, the service noticed the ransomware attack on its network on September 28, 2020. Following this incident, the service started investigating the matter by involving IT experts.
Although, the pharmacy’s business remained unaffected during the incident as they had uninterrupted access to all their backups. Also, they managed to quickly fend-off the attack. As stated in the press release,
Together with forensic experts, the pharmacy terminated the cybercriminals’ access to the pharmacy’s systems the same day (September 28, 2020) and confirmed that an unauthorized third party deployed the ransomware only one day before (September 27, 2020).

However, further investigations made them realize that, while the attacks failed with the ransomware attack, they did manage to steal some files from the company network. The stolen data included the health information of some patients that the pharmacy collected to manage the shipment of prescribed products.
Specifically mentioning the affected details, the notice reads,
The cybercriminals accessed and removed the following health information of certain former GenRx patients: patient ID, transaction ID (a number generated to process the prescription, not related to patient financials), first and last name, address, phone number, date of birth, gender, allergies, medication list, health plan information (including member ID), and prescription information.

Nonetheless, patients’ financial data and SSNs remained safe as the pharmacy doesn’t collect this information.
While the press release doesn’t explicitly mention the number of affected patients, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services breach report shows that the incident affected 137,110 patients.

What Next?

Following the cybersecurity incident, GenRx strengthened its system security by deploying additional antivirus and implementing other security measures.
Whereas, to the patients, they advise monitoring of account statements as a precaution.

Comments

Google can now help you figure out that song stuck in your head - all you have to do is hum (or whistle) into your phone

Google just launched its “hum to search” feature, which allows users to hum, whistle, or sing for 10–15 seconds in order to identify a song. The feature currently works in 20 languages, and Google hopes to add more. Google has finally launched the perfect feature for when a song is stuck in your head but you don’t know any of the words. “Hum to search” launched today on both the Google app for iOS and Android, according to Google’s blog, The Keyword. Users can also whistle or sing directly into the mic to identify a song. The technology works like this: the user can hum (whistle, or sing) for 10–15 seconds, and then Google’s technology takes the song’s melody and turns it into a numbers-based sequence. From there, the sequence can be used to “identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling or humming, as well as studio recordings,” according to Google’s announcement. The sequence also strips away any other outside noise, like accompanying instru...

Ransomware's Dangerous New Trick Is Double-Encrypting Your Data

Ransomware groups have always taken a more-is-more approach . If a victim pays a ransom and then goes back to business as usual-hit them again. Or don’t just encrypt a target’s systems; steal their data first, so you can threaten to leak it if they don’t pay up. The latest escalation? Ransomware hackers who encrypt a victim’s data twice at the same time. Double-encryption attacks have happened before, usually stemming from two separate ransomware gangs compromising the same victim at the same time. But antivirus company Emsisoft says it is aware of dozens of incidents in which the same actor or group intentionally layers two types of ransomware on top of each other. “The groups are constantly trying to work out which strategies are best , which net them the most money for the least amount of effort,” says Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow. “So in this approach you have a single actor deploying two types of ransomware. The victim decrypts their data and discovers it’s not act...

WhatsApp Users Exchanged Over 100 Billion Messages on New Year’s Eve, A New Record

WhatsApp is one of the most widely used communication apps on the planet and as such, clocks an insane number of messages and media exchanges on a daily basis. But the New Year's Eve broke a record that has been standing since WhatsApp's debut a decade ago. WhatsApp has revealed that users exchanged over 100 billion messages on New Year's eve. And out of that number, more than 20 billion messages were shared by Indian users alone. Moreover, around 12 billion out of the 100 billion+ messages shared on the platform were images. WhatsApp wrote in a press release that over 100 billion messages were shared globally on December 31 in the 24-hour duration leading up to the midnight of New Year's Eve. This is a record-breaking volume and is the highest number of messages exchanged in a single day ever since WhatsApp kicked off its services ten years ago. Out of those 100 billion+ messages shared on New Year's eve, WhatsApp says over 12 billion were images. Meanwhile...

Teknologiia News

Search This Blog