Cyber criminals targeting medical data

Whoever was behind the latest theft of personal data from US government computers, they appear to be following a new trend set by cyber criminals: targeting increasingly valuable medical records and personnel files.

This data, experts say, is worth a lot more to cyber criminals than, say, credit card information. And the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) breach revealed on Thursday suggests cyber spies may now also be finding value in it.

Cyber investigators from iSight Partners said they had linked the OPM hack to earlier thefts of healthcare records from Anthem, a health insurance company, and Premera Blue Cross, a healthcare services provider. Tens of millions of records may have been lost in those attacks. All three breaches have one thing in common, said John Hultquist of Dallas-based iSight. While cyber-espionage usually focuses on stealing commercial or government secrets, these attacks targeted personally identifiable information.

The stolen data “doesn’t appear to have been monetised and the actors seem to have connections to cyberespionage activity”, said Hultquist, adding that none of the data taken in the earlier attacks had turned up for sale on underground forums.

A source said US officials were looking into a possible China connection to the breach at OPM, which compromised the personal data of 4m current and former federal employees.

Several US states were already investigating a Chinese link to the Anthem attack in February, a source said. China routinely denies involvement in hacking, and a spokesman for the foreign ministry in Beijing said suggestions it was involved in the OPM breach were “irresponsible and unscientific”.

Hultquist said iSight could not confirm China was behind the attacks, but similar methods, servers and habits of the hackers pointed to a single state-sponsored group.

Security researchers say medical data and personnel records have become more valuable to cyber criminals than credit card data.

The price of stolen credit cards has fallen in online black markets, in part because massive breaches have spiked supply.

“The market has been flooded,” said Ben Ransford, co-founder of security start-up Virta Laboratories.

The result: medical information can be worth 10 times as much as a credit card number.

Fraudsters use this data to create fake IDs to buy medical equipment or drugs that can be resold, or they combine a patient number with a false provider number and file made-up claims with insurers. State-sponsored hackers may not be after money, but would also be interested in such data because they could then build a clearer picture of their target.