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.