The United Kingdom’s public sector has been scrambling to deal with ransomware attacks since the past few months. The latest one to be hit is NHS Trust, in what is claimed to be the biggest-ever breach of the country’s healthcare data. Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs five London-based hospitals, was recently added to the dark web leak site of the ALPHV ransomware gang. The hospitals are: St Bartholomew\u2019s Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, Mile End Hospital, Whipps Cross Hospital and Newham Hospital. The gang has reportedly stolen 70 terabytes of sensitive data.
Dark web posting of the gang<\/span>
The dark web posting by the gang was made on June 30. In the posting, the gang said, \u201cYou have 3 days for contact with us to decide this pity mistake, which made your IT department decide what to do in next step. If you prefer to keep silence, we will start publicate data, most of it \u2013 citizens confidential documents [sic]\u201d. However, it has been almost 10 days since the posting and so far no data has been made public.
What data has been stolen<\/span>
Samples of the allegedly stolen data reportedly include employee identification documents, including passports and driver licenses, and internal emails labeled \u201cconfidential.\u201d Some reports also suggest that it also includes client documentation and credit card data.
Second big hacking in less than a month<\/span>
This is the second breach of NHS data in less than a month. In June, a ransomware attack on the UK\u2019s University of Manchester saw hackers access an NHS dataset that holds information on 1.1 million patients across 200 hospitals. Among the details potentially exposed are NHS numbers and the first three letters of patients\u2019 postcodes. In its warning to health officials, the university said it did not know how many patients were affected or whether names had also been hacked.<\/div>\n