CYBER-CRIME
Cancer diagnostics breach spills personal and health info as extortion crew says healthcare giant ‘should’ve paid the ransom’
Hackers have dumped data stolen from Abbott’s cancer diagnostics business after the healthcare giant apparently declined to pay up, with the leak containing 10.9 million unique email addresses alongside personal and health information.Have I Been Pwned added the Exact Sciences breach to its database on Friday after data stolen by the ShinyHunters extortion crew was published online. The leak includes names, email and physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, genders, and personal health information belonging to customers, patients, and healthcare providers.Abbott, which acquired cancer diagnostics outfit Exact Sciences earlier this year, first disclosed the break-in on July 16. In an update on August 5, it acknowledged that some of the files accessed contained personal information and/or personal health information, but said it was still analyzing the data and had yet to determine who needed to be notified.
The company also revealed that the intrusion began with a vishing attack, and stressed that this was “not an encryption malware event.” It said only a limited number of internal systems within its cancer diagnostics business were affected, with no disruption to products, manufacturing, laboratory operations, or patient services.
