“While attribution of this incident is still being determined by a range of partners, we caution against leaping to premature conclusions about who or how many actors are behind these activities,” said the official.
However, the Chicago Tribune reports that Tomi Galin, spokeswoman for Community Health Systems, said the company has reason to believe a group of hackers from China may be the cause.
Medical and clinical information was not stolen, but according to CHS’ regulatory filing the stolen information includes patient names, birth dates, addresses, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers. These are all pieces of information that put the 4.5 million affected patients at risk for identity theft.
Following the attack ,Community Health Systems has removed the malware from its systems and is taking steps to ensure another attack does not happen. They are notifying all patients, as required by law, and similar to Target who had a huge data breach earlier this year, CHS also plans to offer identity theft protection to the millions affected.
To see an interactive map of hospitals in the Community Health Systems network, click here.
4.5M Patients Affected By Hacked Hospital Network was originally published on blackdoctor.org
