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: Health Care Law Blog

Virginia Department of Health Professions Breach: Extortion Demand Regarding 8M Patient Records and 35M Prescriptions

By Bob Coffield

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Information Week is covering a story involving an extortion letter sent last week to the Virginia Department of Health Professions seeking $10M to return more than 8M patient records and 35M prescriptions allegedly stolen from the Virginia Department of Health Professions.

The extortion demand was posted on WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks website states:

May 3, 2009
Summary

On Thursday, April 30, the secure site for the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) was replaced with a $US10M ransom demand:
"I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password."
The site, https://www.pmp.dhp.virginia.gov/pmpwebcenter/login.aspx appears to have been entirely disabled and is presently unavailable.
The linked file provides the full ransom message.
The PMP is used by pharmacists and others to discover prescription drug abuse.
The PMP declined to comment, although when contacted, appeared to be aware of the issue, instantly referring inquiries to the director of the DHP, who is presently unavailable.

The Virginia Department of Health Professions website indicates that they are "currently experiencing technical difficulties which affet computerand email systems."

Sandra Whitely Ryals, Director of Virginia Department of Health Professionals, responded to the inquiry by Information Week stating that "a criminal investigation is under way by federal and state authorities."

The Washington Post Security Fix blog is also covering this story. Follow more news on this story via Google News.

Full post as published by Health Care Law Blog on May 05, 2009 (boomark / email).

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