'Hacker' threatens to expose health data, demands $10M

As i have said its only going to get far worse before individuals in positions who hold great responsibility take note. There are several private company's out there who truly have great minds behind the industry, unfortunately there are those who tend to look at making a quick dollar as system administrators by contracting firms who have above average knowledge but are not considered the elite within the nation.

WASHINGTON - America's air traffic control systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and support systems have been breached in recent months to allow hackers access to personnel records and network servers, a new report says.

The audit done by the Department of Transportation's inspector general concluded that although most of the attacks disrupted only support systems, they could spread to the operational systems that control communications, surveillance, and flight information used to separate aircraft.

Example 1
The report noted several recent cyber attacks, including a February incident, in which hackers gained access to personal information on about 48,000 current and former FAA employees, and an attack in 2008 when hackers took control of some FAA network servers.

www.boston.com...

Example 2

SAN FRANCISCO - HACKERS appear to be beefing up armies of 'zombie' computers to recover from a major hit scored in the battle against spam email, according to software security firm McAfee.

A McAfee report said that during the first three months of this year, nearly 12 million new computers were added to the ranks of machines infected with 'malware' that lets cybercriminals use them to spew spam.

www.straitstimes.com...

I guess this is about the best time to post the following.
It has come to my attention that what i thought was providing updated news with the purpose of interacting with similar people like myself regarding these breaking topics have somehow attracted unwanted attention that i would rather not have. Having said that, i will not posting any similar topics or related topics, how ever the occasional response to post's will be within the realm of rational thinking.

Peace.

Maybe I am missing something, but how would he ever collect the ransom even if they agreed to pay? Wouldn't the FBI be waiting for him to go pick up the money? Even a transfer to a Swiss bank could be tracked eventually I think. Wonder if he thought this thru.

reply to post by oneinthesame


That's what I thought as well. Unless it was to a numbered Swiss account in someone else's name, there would be no real way to get away with this ransom in this day and age.

There must be something missing in all this.

Well, this IS a conspiracy website so I can at least speculate that there is another unconsidered possibility.

Since we know NOTHING - and probably shouldn't know - about the details of the sequestered information; this could all be one of the famous "Problem - Reaction - Solution" scenarios as described by Icke. We will never, after all, get the details of what went down, outside the 'official reports' the investigators will publish.

This 'event' could serve a further justification to clamp down of internet freedom. Since that is the establishments objective, as implied by Mr. Rockerfeller's declaration of the Internet being the number one threat to American security; one might be inclined to think this kind of thing could be 'orchestrated' and 'acted out' simply to speed up the process.

Otherwise, perhaps this is more than just some 'hacker', it's actually a conspiracy of organized crime, who have the resources to handle that kind of monetary transfer and subsequent laundering.

It's kind of funny that even if it is the former, it's still can rightly be considered a manifestation of organized crime.

reply to post by vkey08


"The alleged ransom note posted on the PMP site claimed that the hacker had backed up and encrypted more than 8 million patient records and 35 million prescriptions and then deleted the original data. "

So, doesnt Virginia DHP Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) keep a current backup of their data? Hmm, many companies even spread their backups geographically in case of a catastrophe. IT in healthcare is a mess though, in any country.

[edit on 2009/5/7 by reugen]

Originally posted by reugen

So, doesnt Virginia DHP Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) keep a current backup of their data? Hmm, many companies even spread their backups geographically in case of a catastrophe. IT in healthcare is a mess though, in any country.

[edit on 2009/5/7 by reugen]

It is 100% certain that the data was being backed up. I don't know of a single healthcare organization who does not. That said, depending on the backup strategy and methodology, it's not 100% certain that there won't be data loss to some degree.

Many Federal and State Heath care agencies also replicate their data to an alternate site so it's a good bet that the deletion of the data by the hacker is a non issue.

reply to post by David9176


True we need internet regulation lead by Sen. Rockefeller.