Electronic Medical Records and Your in Good Hands

[Annie]

The government doesn't do these things well. Another reason to hope for privacy from the government:

Security Fix - Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demand Ransom

Hackers Break Into Virginia Health Professions Database, Demand Ransom
Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents.

Wikileaks reports that the Web site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program was defaced last week with a message claiming that the database of prescriptions had been bundled into an encrypted, password-protected file.

Wikileaks has published a copy of the ransom note left in place of the PMP home page, a message that claims the state of Virginia would need to pay the demand in order to gain access to a password needed to unlock those records:

"I have your [expletive] 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."...​

This is the second major extortion attack related to the theft of health care data in the past year. In October 2008, Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest processors of pharmacy prescriptions, disclosed that extortionists were threatening to disclose personal and medical information on millions of Americans if the company failed to meet payment demands. Express Scripts is currently offering a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for trying to extort money from the company.

By Brian Krebs | May 4, 2009; 6:39 PM ET

 

[strollingbones]

you know it does seem like they would have a disc back up in a safe ....o ...just for the hell of it

 

[KittenKoder]

you know it does seem like they would have a disc back up in a safe ....o ...just for the hell of it

LOL ... you'd expect people who use technology so much to be at least that bright, wouldn't you.

 

[editec]

The government can do whatever it has the will do do VERY WELL.

Sadly, much of what the government does poorly is serve the people.