cyberattack

A cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare has ground much of the U.S. healthcare system to a halt for the second week in a row. Hospitals have been unable to check insurance benefits of in-patient stays, handle the prior authorizations needed for patient procedures and surgeries, or process billing that pays for medical services. Pharmacies have struggled to determine how much to charge patients for prescriptions without access to their health insurance records, forcing some to pay for costly…

UnitedHealth Group, the largest US health insurer, is likely to need several months to make a full recovery from a cyberattack that has been one of the most disruptive hacks against America's healthcare infrastructure, security experts said. Since its Change Healthcare unit was breached on February 21 by a hacking group called ALPHV, also known as "BlackCat", UnitedHealth has said it is working to restore impacted channels, and that some of its systems are returning to normal. While it has not provided a timeline for full…

Healthcare providers across the United States are struggling to get paid following the week-long ransomware outage at a key tech unit of UnitedHealth Group, with some smaller providers saying they are already running low on cash.Large hospital chains are also locked out of processing payments with some absorbing the upfront costs of being unable to collect, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA), which represents nearly 5,000 hospitals, healthcare systems, networks, and other providers.Reuters could not…

An ongoing cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare that sparked outages and disruption to hospitals and pharmacies across the U.S. for the past week was caused by ransomware, TechCrunch has learned. A healthcare executive with knowledge of the incident, who was on the call briefed by the company’s executives, said the healthcare tech giant attributed the cyberattack to the BlackCat ransomware group. Reuters first reported the news linking the cyberattack to BlackCat, citing two people familiar with…

Days after it was knocked offline by a sweeping, years-in-the-making law enforcement operation, the notorious Russia-based LockBit ransomware group has returned to the dark web with a new leak site complete with a number of new victims. In a verbose, borderline-rambling statement published Saturday, the remaining LockBit administrator blamed its own negligence for last week’s disruption. A global law enforcement effort launched an operation that hijacked the ransomware gang’s infrastructure by exploiting a…

The Supreme Court is considering the fate of two state laws that limit how social media companies can moderate the content on their platforms. In oral arguments on Monday, the justices grappled with a thorny set of questions that could reshape the internet, from social networks like Facebook and TikTok to apps like Yelp and Etsy. In October, the Supreme Court decided to hear the two parallel cases, one in Florida (Moody v. NetChoice, LLC) and one in Texas (NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton). In both instances, signed into law…

AT&T said Thursday evening that a nationwide outage earlier in the day was not caused by a cyberattack, based on an initial review. “Based on our initial review, we believe the outage was caused by the application & execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” the company said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We are continuing our assessment to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve.” The company…

Orders at several pharmacies have been delayed after a cyberattack was detected at UnitedHealth’s technology unit, Change Healthcare. The company said issues began Wednesday afternoon and some applications were unavailable. In a post later on Wednesday, Change Healthcare said it was experiencing network interruptions related to cybersecurity issues. Security experts “took immediate action” once the company was aware of the outside threat to protect the interests of its partners and patients. The…

Canadian federal police said on Friday their systems were targeted by an "alarming" cyberattack but there was no impact on operations and no known threat to the safety of Canadians."The situation is evolving quickly but at this time, there is no impact on RCMP operations and no known threat to the safety and security of Canadians," a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told reporters on Friday afternoon. Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIIM LucknowIIML…

Chad Morehead/Unsplash An AT&T service outage that impacted a huge number of its customers across the U.S. on Thursday was not caused by a cyberattack, the company’s initial investigation has revealed. Instead, the cellular and internet outage was the fault of work that it was carrying out on its systems, AT&T said in a message posted on its website on Thursday evening. “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we…