A prescription is filled on Jan. 6, 2023, in Morganton, N.C. A ransomware attack is disrupting pharmacies and hospitals nationwide this week.A prescription is filled on Jan. 6, 2023, in Morganton, N.C. A ransomware attack is disrupting pharmacies and hospitals nationwide this week.A ransomware attack is disrupting pharmacies and hospitals nationwide, leaving patients with problems filling prescriptions or seeking medical treatment.
On Thursday, UnitedHealth Group accused a notorious ransomware gang known as Black Cat, or AlphV, of hacking health care payment systems across the country.As a result, hospitals, pharmacies and other health care providers have either been unable to access the popular payment platform, or have purposefully shut off connections to its network to prevent the hackers from gaining further access.
UnitedHealth says that as of Monday it estimated that more than 90% of 70,000 pharmacies in the U.S. have had to change how they process electronic claims as a result of the outage.
After hiring multiple outside firms, including top cybersecurity companies Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks, UnitedHealth released its conclusion that BlackCat, or AlphV, is behind the breach, a conclusion bolstered by the group itself originally claiming credit on its dark web leak site. The post has since been taken down., the FBI broke into the groups' internal servers, stealing information about decryption tools for victims and seizing control of several of its websites. The U.S.
Cybercriminals frequently reassemble after experiencing setbacks, particularly when their operators are located in countries whose law enforcement agencies are lax about prosecuting their crimes.That's especially true in Russia. While researchers have not definitively tied BlackCat to Russia or its government, they've concluded it is a Russian-speaking group. U.S.