Medical records are known to be a treasure trove for hackers. Once cyber-criminals have access to these, they can sell them on the black market for up to $10 (£7.67) per record, according to Anthony James at U.S. security firm, TrapX.<\/p>\n
But it seems cyber-criminals don’t have to hack into computer systems to access records as a ‘huge trove’ of confidential U.S. medical records were found on an unsecured server; accessible to malicious hackers and cyber-security professionals.
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\nGizmodo reports that tens of thousands – if not millions – of medical records were contained within a database that was readily accessible to anyone who gained access to it. The information that was online included New York patients’ demographic information, social security numbers, records of medical diagnoses, and treatments. There were also large amounts of other highly-sensitive records accessible. The files were reported to have originated from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Centre in New York.<\/p>\n
NBC News highlighted that the Bronx Lebanon Hospital said the medical records were the “target of an unauthorised hack by a third party”. This conclusion was drawn from the hospital\u2019s third party vendor, iHealth Solutions. According to the hospital, iHealth took immediate steps to protect the medical records and both parties are “cooperating fully with law enforcement agencies”.<\/p>\n
According to Kromtech Security Centre, a German security software development firm, the hospital and their vendor had in fact lied about it being as a result of a malicious cyber-hack. Instead, Kromtech’s analysis contends that the medical records were left unprotected on a backup storage device that wasn’t password protected. They also say that the records weren’t protected by an active firewall. A firewall can establish a barrier between a trusted, secure and internal network and another outside network which is considered as unsecure and untrusted. Without an active firewall, this can make thousands of patients vulnerable i.e. through identity theft and blackmail.<\/p>\n
A big mistake for a hospital to make.<\/strong><\/p>\n The leaked files have been secured now, but the data contained a number of intake forms for those who were enrolling onto the chemical dependency programmes for substance abuse. The security researchers who found the data told Gizmodo: <\/p>\n