UnitedHealth hack exposes health data of over 100 million Americans

UnitedHealth has confirmed that over 100 million people had their personal information and healthcare data stolen in the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, marking this as the largest healthcare data breach in recent years. The February attack was made possible using stolen credentials because the company’s Citrix remote access service didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled.

The actual data exposed may vary by individual, but includes health insurance information, health information, billing claims and payment information, and other personal information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses or state IDnumbers, or passport numbers.

A massive 6TB of data was extracted before the company’s computers were encrypted, causing chaos for doctors and patients alike. The company admitted to paying a ransom for the decryption key, reportedly handing over $22M.