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Hacker Wants $10M Ransom for Stolen Virginia Private Patient Data

by Peter Mychalcewycz on May 7, 2009 at 12:16 PM


On April 30th, an unidentified individual, or group, hacked into the Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program's Web site, WikiLeaks first reported Sunday. A full week after the hack occurred, the perpetrator is still holding hostage the private data of over 8 million Virginia patients.

The party responsible for this security breach didn't hack into the prescription-drug-abuse-tracking site for fun, either. The hacker, or hackers, posted a ransom note on the Web site that, according to WikiLeaks, read:
I have your [expletive]! 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.
For days, Virginia state police and FBI investigators have been trying to get to the bottom of the theft, which could ultimately result in the misuse of those 8 million packets of personal information. The government has not yet publicly identified the 8 million victims, nor has it notified them privately.

"There is an aspect of this investigation that is very sensitive that plays into when notification can take place," Virginia Governor Tom Kaine told NBC 29 yesterday. According to Kaine, that sensitive investigation is essentially two-pronged -- seeking to both recover the purloined data and apprehend the responsible party. According to an AP report hosted on NBC 29's site, the Governor made up for the lack of information with plenty of fire: "Kaine said the act infuriated him and the hackers won't get a penny."

Federal authorities haven't been any more forthcoming.

"I really can't make a declarative statement as to whether anyone's information is in jeopardy at this point," an FBI official told FOX News yesterday.

"The entire DHP [Department of Health Professions] system has been shut down since Thursday to protect the security of the program data," department director Sandra Whitley Ryals told FOX News. The Prescription Monitoring Program's Web site was still down at the time of this writing. [From: WikiLeaks, NBC29, AP and FOX News, Via: CNET]

Tags: crime, government, hack, hackers, hacking, identity theft, IdentityTheft, prescription drugs, PrescriptionDrugs, security, top, virginia

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