UK Hospital Hackers Claim to Publish Stolen NHS Data
The cyber criminals taking credit for the hack on London hospitals earlier this month have published what they claim is stolen data from the attack.
England’s National Health Service said in a statement Friday it was aware that the data was published overnight, with the hackers claiming it belongs to Synnovis, the pathology provider that was hit in the June 3 hack.
“We understand that people may be concerned by this, and we are continuing to work with Synnovis, the National Cyber Security Centre and other partners to determine the content of the published files as quickly as possible,” said the NHS in a statement. “This includes whether it is data extracted from the Synnovis system, and if so whether it relates to NHS patients.”
The hackers claiming responsibility published more than 380GB of data to their channel on messaging app Telegram overnight, Bloomberg News confirmed.
The data includes patient names, dates of birth, NHS numbers and descriptions of blood tests, according to the BBC. Financial spreadsheets were also reportedly published.
The NHS has not confirmed details about the nature of the published data, and it isn’t clear if the information includes test results. The attack is being investigated by law enforcement agencies.
Russian-speaking hacker group Qilin has said it’s responsible for the disruption, with a representative telling Bloomberg News earlier this week it was demanding $50 million to end the attack.
Targeted provider Synnovis is a partnership between Synlab UK & Ireland and two publicly funded NHS trusts – Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust — and provides lab testing services to hospitals and primary care services in London and Kent. Its blood transfusion and blood testing capabilities have been directly impacted over the last two weeks.
More than 1,000 operations and more than 2,000 appointments have been postponed at the two hospital units that were affected by the attack.
Photograph: St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Photo credit: Belinda Jiao/Getty Images
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