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The second greatest heist of the year occurred online, exposing abortion patients and other confidential cases.
It was a chess game for Medibank and their hackers after the former refused to comply with the ransom. Though the health insurer did the right thing, they suffered the after-effects of rejecting the ransom requirement.
On Monday, Medibank announced it would not pay a ransom. After two days, customers’ addiction rehab and mental health care data were released on the dark web. Then 24 hours later, patients who had undergone abortion were exposed. On Friday, data on alcoholism and more mental health issues were leaked.
According to Josh Roose, a political sociologist at Deakin University, healthcare companies are typical targets of ransomware assaults. However, their IT systems are frequently closed, with a ransom demand in exchange for regaining access.
For instance, a group of hackers has accessed 235,000 patient cases of Keystone Health in Pennsylvania. However, unlike Medibank, the issue did not reach a public release of their client’s confidential information.
Daile Kelleher, chief executive of the reproductive rights organisation Children by Choice, said this issue is way beyond violating privacy. Women should be protected from pregnancy termination they had. Even though abortion is legalised in the country, many people still are not open to the idea, and it remains a stigmatised type of health care. A lot of women can be put at risk because of this.
“Our biggest concern was the impact this could have on people with reproductive coercion and abuse, or domestic and family violence, in their lives,” said Kelleher.
Following Optus, a telecommunications company hacked last September, Medibank became the next victim in October. The series of hacking used data including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, and email addresses of the clients. Thus, the weaponisation of private information affects big companies and puts ordinary Australians’ lives at risk.
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