Apex Laboratory, three decades old medical testing firm that provides home blood sample collection to patients, has disclosed that it has become a victim of a cyber attack where threat actors stole data from its servers almost 5 months ago and posted it online now.
The healthcare agency that offers online medical help services to thousands of general physicians in New York and Florida admitted that the data might have been siphoned from its IT systems in between July 21st- July 25th last year.
Apex that also offers Phlebotomy services at home also stated in its latest press statement that cyber criminals might have got patient data pertaining to test results, date of births, names, and social security numbers along with their contact numbers and addresses.
It is still unclear how many patients were impacted by the data breach as an investigation made by the third party is underway.
A note posted on the website on December 31st, 2020 revealed that the attack might be of ransomware genre as some data on the systems was encrypted and remained inaccessible. And since the laboratory did not pay the demanded ransom, the hackers might have published the stolen data.
Note- A ransomware is a kind of malware variant that encrypts data on the server until a ransom is paid. However, as the hackers are evolving in their malevolent techniques, they are now seen first stealing a portion of data and then encrypting the database- to benefit in either way.
