Officials offer $10 million reward for info on UnitedHealth hackers
Newsy
Ransomware by the group ALPHV BlackCat was first spotted in Nov. 2021. The group recruits affiliates to spread ransomware and shares the spoils.
The U.S. State Department is offering up to a $10 million reward for any information on the hackers who were behind the most disruptive health care cyberattacks in the country's history.
On Feb. 21, Change Healthcare, a UnitedHealth Group subsidiary responsible for managing payment systems in most U.S. hospitals, experienced a cyberattack that affected billing, care authorization for patients, and caused prescription backlogs. This left hospitals, patients and medical providers across the country cash-strapped.
Now U.S. officials are seeking more information about individuals that could have been acting under foreign government direction to deploy these cyber attacks, which violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
"The ALPHV BlackCat ransomware-as-a-service group compromised computer networks of critical infrastructure sectors in the United States and worldwide, deploying ransomware on the targeted systems, disabling security features within the victim’s network, stealing sensitive confidential information, demanding payment to restore access, and threatening to publicize the stolen data if victims do not pay a ransom," the State Department wrote in a statement.
Officials say ransomware from the group ALPHV BlackCat was first identified in Nov. 2021. The group operates as a team that creates ransomware and recruits affiliates to spread it; then ALPHV BlackCat and their affiliates share the money they receive from the paid ransoms.
