Huge Heartbleed data theft logged
An FBI warning says an attacker is targeting personal data and valuable intellectual property, such as information related to the development of medical devices and equipment.
The FBI has warned health care providers and health IT device makers that they have been targeted in what appears to be one of the largest disclosed cyberattacks based on the Heartbleed Open SSL vulnerability that was uncovered last spring.
The FBI issued an unclassified but restricted warning to health care providers in mid-August in response to an intrusion into Community Health Systems Professional Services Corp.'s (CHSPSC) network. In an Aug. 19 statement, the company said that it had determined in July that its computer network was targeted by an external criminal cyberattack between April and June. The Tennessee-based company provides management, consulting, and IT services to clinics and hospital-based physicians.
Reports in mid-August indicated the attack was based on the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerability on a network device that hadn't been patched. The FBI's warning, issued in late August and posted on the Public Intelligence open-source website Sept. 2, seems to confirm those reports but does not explicitly say the Heartbleed vulnerability was exploited.
According to the FBI, the attack on CHSPSC began with a spear phishing email message that contains a malicious link that may connect unwary users to a new virtual private network site, service or client or a webmail site. The network is subsequently compromised via ports 80, 443 and possibly others. Those ports are vulnerable to OpenSSL Heartbleed exploits.
A company filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission said records for 4.5 million individuals were stolen, including nonmedical data related to the company's physician practice operations. The company said the attackers stole patients' names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, telephone numbers, along with the names of employers or guarantors. However, the company said that to the best of its knowledge, no credit card, medical or clinical information was taken.
The company said a Chinese group that "used highly sophisticated malware technology to attack CHSPSC's systems" was behind the attack. The intruders bypassed security measures and copied and transferred data from its systems, according to a statement from Andi Bosshart, CHSPSC's corporate compliance and privacy officer.
Beyond seeking to gather personal data, the FBI warned that the group has also been targeting companies in the health care industry to steal valuable intellectual property, such as information related to the development of medical devices and equipment.