Decatur County General Hospital has notified patients of a breach in which a hacker remotely installed unauthorized software on the hospital’s EHR system. The software was installed to generate digital currency, or cryptocurrency.
The incident impacted 24,000 patient records, according to the OCR breach portal. The affected server included patients’ names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers, diagnosis and treatment information and insurance billing information.
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The Parsons, Tennessee-based hospital doesn’t believe any patient information was accessed. Still, it’s offering impacted individuals one year of free credit monitoring services.
On November 27, 2017, the EHR vendor notified the hospital of the situation. Decatur County General has been investigating the breach since then.
Interestingly, the unauthorized software was initially installed on the server at least as of September 22. Decatur’s EHR vendor replaced the server approximately four days later.
“Over the past several months, there have been numerous news stories about computer systems around the country being affected by similar incidents involving the unauthorized installation of this type of software,” the hospital said in a January notification letter to patients.
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That’s true. Using cryptocurrency in hacking schemes is part of a growing trend. In October, an MIT Technology Review article highlighted it, and it continues today. In fact, over this past weekend, various U.K. and American government websites were hijacked by cryptocurrency mining malware, according to TechCrunch.
But the trend appears to be less common in the healthcare environment — or if it is widespread, there hasn’t been as much news about it. Instead, the industry should be wary. This seems to be the downside of the growing hype around blockchain and bitcoin.
Photo: HYWARDS, Getty Images
