Hacker demands $10 million ransom for stolen Virginia medical data

A hacker who claims to have stolen the health records of over 8.3 million Virginia residents is demanding $10 million for their return.The case is now being investigated by federal and state authorities.

The secure site run by the Virginia Department of Health Professions for the prescription monitoring program was hacked on last Thursday. The site is shut down since then as the hacker posted a message demanding ransom.The hacker claimed to have deleted the original database and created an encrypted backup copy .The state authorities have started an investigation and it is unclear whether the database is secure or not.

The Prescription Monitoring Program is administered by the Virginia Department of Health Professionals.It collects information about every prescription for certain federally controlled drugs dispensed by Virginia pharmacies. Virginia had established the prescription monitoring database in 2003 to track the sales of controlled substances.

The ransom demands were posted by the hacker in the open Wikileaks.org. It read

I have your s***! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.You have 7 days to decide. If by the end of 7 days, you decide not to pony up, I’ll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid.


Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Department of Health Profession said the database was backed up properly and the data was safe.