05 May 2009, 10:24

Crackers demand $10M for patient database

According to US media reports criminals have stolen the data of 8 million American patients from the server of the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program and replaced the site's home page with a ten million dollar ransom demand. The server is used for monitoring the issuing of prescriptions for painkillers such as opiates and aims to prevent drug abuse.

According to Brian Krebs of the Washington Post, the criminals obtained access to the server through some unknown route, created an encrypted copy of the data, erased the original data and left the blackmail message. Wikileaks made a copy and have published the 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 server is currently not accessible. Virginia's Department Of Health Professions say they are already working with investigators and authorities.

(djwm)

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