276m Americans' data breached in major healthcare hacks
A staggering 276 million patient records were compromised in 2024, experts have revealed.
It suggests eight in 10 Americans had some form of medical data stolen last year.
The biggest hack in 2024 was also one the largest healthcare data breaches in US history, impacting 190 million patients linked to Change Healthcare.
Now, researchers at the cyber watchdog Check Point are warning of a newly uncovered healthcare cyberattack that could expose even more sensitive information than the previous year.
According to the team, cybercriminals are impersonating practicing doctors to trick patients into revealing Social Security numbers, medical histories, insurance details, and other personal data.
The phishing campaign has been active since March 20, and researchers estimate that 95 percent of its targets are in the US.
'In some versions of these phishing emails, cybercriminals deploy images of real, practicing doctors but pair them with fake names,' the Check Point team reported.
The emails instruct recipients to contact a listed healthcare provider using a specific phone number—part of the scam.
Researchers noted that Zocdoc has become a key tool in the attackers' arsenal, as it allows them to use images of real doctors while disguising their identities with fake credentials.
The Check Point team noted that the data compromised in 2024 amounted to roughly 758,000 records every single day.
'Victims of medical identity theft will spend an average of 210 hours and $2,500 out-of-pocket to reclaim their identities and resolve the fallout,' the researchers said.
In one case, cybercriminals created a fake profile on Zocdoc using a real doctor's image but a fake name and sent a fake pre-appointment message, booking confirmation, and additional instructions.
To safeguard patients' private information and finances, healthcare organizations are urged to install advanced phishing filters, conduct regular employee cybersecurity training and mock drills, and ensure their IT teams are equipped to respond to threats quickly.
In March 2025, Yale New Haven Health experienced a data breach affecting approximately 5.5 million individuals.
Hackers copied the data on the day it was discovered, indicating a likely ransomware attack and exposing the fragility of the U.S. healthcare system.
These breaches highlight systemic failures in the cybersecurity infrastructure of the healthcare sector. Many organizations still rely on outdated systems that lack modern security protocols, making them easy targets for cybercriminals.
A recent study revealed that some medical devices—unlike smartphones or laptops—lack basic security safeguards, making them a significant entry point for hackers.
By compromising devices like MRI machines, cybercriminals can gain access to entire networks and connected systems, creating widespread vulnerabilities.
The financial repercussions of these breaches are staggering. UnitedHealth Group estimated the cost of the Change Healthcare breach at approximately $2.5 billion, covering response efforts, system rebuilds, and support for affected providers.
'The company has restored most of the affected Change Healthcare services while continuing to provide financial assistance to remaining healthcare providers in need,' UnitedHealth Group stated.
Beyond financial damage, the cyberattack also caused severe operational disruption.
For instance, delays in processing insurance claims forced some patients to pay out of pocket for medications and services. Smaller healthcare providers faced devastating revenue losses, threatening their survival.
In response to the rising threat, a new set of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations was proposed in January 2025.
The goal is to enhance the protection of medical records through stronger data encryption and stricter compliance checks.
The proposed rule is expected to cost $9 billion in the first year and $6 billion annually over the next four years.
Patients affected by data breaches are urged to monitor their financial accounts, request credit reports, and consider placing fraud alerts.
'Patients are encouraged to review statements from their healthcare providers and report any inaccuracies immediately,' said Yale New Haven Health.
The exposure of 276 million patient records underscores the urgent need to reinforce cybersecurity in healthcare.
As threats continue to evolve, it's critical for healthcare organizations to implement modern safeguards and conduct regular audits to stay ahead of attackers and protect sensitive patient data.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Eating at least five grams of butter a day can reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease
Spread the news – butter might actually reduce your risk of heart disease, according to scientists. They found tucking into at least five grams a day – or roughly a teaspoonful – reduced the risk of Type 2 diabetes, a major cause of heart disease, by almost a third. Butter also increased levels of so-called 'good' cholesterol in the blood and lowered those of harmful fats known to clog up arteries and lead to heart attacks and strokes. The findings, by researchers from Boston University in the US, fly in the face of decades of research showing saturated fats such as butter contribute to potentially fatal cardiac disease. At the same time, popular margarines introduced as a 'healthy' replacement for butter had the opposite effect – raising the risk of diabetes by more than 40 per cent and heart problems by 30 per cent. Studies linking diets rich in dairy fats with cardiovascular problems first emerged in the 1960s, when scientists investigated the link between Western eating habits and soaring rates of heart disease. As a result, medical advice has stressed the need to reduce the consumption of animal fats to protect the heart against damage. But more recent studies have questioned butter's connection with blocked arteries and found it contains ingredients which may actually be good for the heart. The Boston University team tracked almost 2,500 men and women over the age of 30 for several decades, recording what they ate and how many went on to develop diabetes or heart disease. The results, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed those who ate 5g or more a day were 31 per cent less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes – which is usually caused by poor diet and a poor lifestyle – than those eating little or no butter. Meanwhile, those eating margarines faced a bigger risk of heart problems. Researchers stressed this was probably due to unhealthy trans fats being used from the 1970s onwards in margarines, but which have now largely been phased out of most spreads. WHAT SHOULD A BALANCED DIET LOOK LIKE? • Eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day. All fresh, frozen, dried and canned fruit and vegetables count • Base meals on potatoes, bread, rice, pasta or other starchy carbohydrates, ideally wholegrain • 30 grams of fibre a day: This is the same as eating all of the following: 5 portions of fruit and vegetables, 2 whole-wheat cereal biscuits, 2 thick slices of wholemeal bread and large baked potato with the skin on • Have some dairy or dairy alternatives (such as soya drinks) choosing lower fat and lower sugar options • Eat some beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins (including 2 portions of fish every week, one of which should be oily) • Choose unsaturated oils and spreads and consuming in small amounts • Drink 6-8 cups/glasses of water a day • Adults should have less than 6g of salt and 20g of saturated fat for women or 30g for men a day
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Doctors use poo pills to flush out dangerous superbugs
UK doctors are attempting to clear dangerous superbug infections using "poo pills" containing freeze-dried stool samples come from healthy donors and are packed with good data suggests superbugs can be flushed out of the dark murky depths of the bowel and replaced with a mix of healthy gut is a new approach to tackling infections that resist antibiotics, which are thought to kill a million people each year. The focus is on the bowels which are "the biggest reservoir of antibiotic resistance in humans" says Dr Blair Merrick, who has been testing the pills at Guys and St Thomas' superbugs can escape their intestinal home and cause trouble elsewhere in the body – such as urinary tract or bloodstream infections."So there's a lot of interest in 'can you get rid of them from the gut?'," says Dr idea of poo-pills isn't as far-fetched as it might seem. Faecal transplants – also known as a trans-poo-tion - are already approved for treating severe diarrhoea caused by Clostridium difficile scientists noticed hints that faecal transplants for C. difficile also seemed to get rid of superbugs. New research has focused on patients who had an infection caused by drug-resistant bacteria in the past six were given pills made from faeces which people had donated to a stool stool sample is tested to ensure it does not contain any harmful bugs, undigested food is removed and then it is freeze dried into a is stored inside a pill that can pass through the stomach unscathed and reach the intestines where it dissolves to release its poopy powdery payload. The trial has taken place on 41 patients at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in London to lay the groundwork for a large-scale study. It showed patients were up for taking a poo pill and the donated bacteria were still being detected in the bowels at least a month Merrick says there are "really promising signals" that poo pills could help tackle the rising scourge of superbugs and that donor bacteria could be going to microbial war with the superbugs as they compete over food and space on the lining of the gut and either rid the body of them completely or "reduce them down to a level that doesn't cause problems".The study also suggests the array of gut bacteria becomes more varied after the therapy. This is a sign of good health and "may well be promoting colonisation resistance" so it is harder for new infectious bugs to get in."It's very exciting. There's a real shift from 20 years ago where all bacteria and viruses were assumed to do you harm; to now where we realise they are completely necessary to our overall health," says Dr this week scientists showed the good bacteria our bodies meet – in the hours after we are born – seem to halve the risk of young children being admitted to hospital with lung infections. Our body's own human cells are outnumbered by the bacteria, fungi and others that live inside us - known as the has led to research implicating the microbiome in everything from Crohn's disease to cancer to mental health. If poo pills are proven to work against superbugs in larger studies then the researchers think they could be used for both treatment and prevention in people at risk. Medical procedures that suppress the immune system - including cancer therapies and organ transplants - can make the body more vulnerable."A lot of these individuals come to a lot of harm from drug resistant organisms," Dr UK's drugs regulator – the Medicines and Healthcare Products Agency – said there were more than 450 microbiome medicines currently in development."Some of them will success, so I do think we will seem them coming through quite soon," said Dr Chrysi Sergaki, the head of microbiome research at the MHRA."We could potentially, in the future, replace antibiotics with microbiome [therapies] - that's the big picture, so there's a lot of potential."
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: A serious outbreak of old-fashioned class war hits the NHS
When a child needs medical help in an advanced wealthy country with a comprehensive health service, it ought to be a simple matter. The help will be provided. The child will be treated. So how can it be that the parent of such a child in a London suburb was told by her GP that the boy is not eligible for important therapy – because he does not attend a state school? Despite the rather ridiculous wriggling of the local NHS authorities, when confronted with this fact, we know beyond doubt that this was the reason given. Surely this is the most blatant discrimination against a social group, the significant minority, many of them far from rich, who pay school fees? Why should they not qualify for the NHS? They pay the same taxes as everyone else, and indeed reduce the burden on the state by allowing it to maintain fewer school places. After all, we are always told that the NHS is our proudest achievement, open to all, free at the point of use. It now has a 'constitution' in England, a document which proclaims that the service 'has a duty every individual that it serves and must respect their human rights'. Similarly, a Charter of Patient Rights in Scotland pledges that all will be 'treated fairly and equally and will not be discriminated against'. Look carefully at these documents and you will find them especially concerned with the 'protected rights' which preoccupy modern Left-wingers, listed in England as 'gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, belief, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity or marital or civil partnership status' – though the pledge about age is perhaps less honoured than the others. The original sin of British discrimination, social class, does not even get a mention. Perhaps it is time it was included, even though the old-fashioned sort, top-down snobbery, is now very much in retreat. For we are seeing a growth in anti-private-school sentiment across the public and charitable sector. This begins to look very much like an outbreak of old-fashioned class war, especially since the VAT raid on private schools. This is quite obviously aimed at hurting the fee-paying classes. The large numbers of children who have since switched to state schools will surely have wiped out any notional gain. The class war goes wider and deeper. Few now seriously doubt that private school students face discrimination at the hands of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Not long ago, the anti-bullying charity named after Princess Diana amazed fee-paying schools when it told them that it would no longer allow them to take part in events or host them – because of 'newly defined funding priorities'. Even more recently, sick children who attended private schools, including cancer patients, were refused a free education on the wards of one of Scotland's leading children's hospitals. Their parents were told to pay for the tutoring that state-school children received free. The authorities were quite unashamed and replied bossily to protests, telling one family 'as you have chosen to privately educate your son, he cannot be supported by this team, you have effectively opted out of state-funded education and supports'. Why would that be so? It is not as if parents who go private are given back the taxes they have paid, which support state schools. What we are seeing here is a revival of the anti-middle-class loathing and discrimination that used to be practised by Communist states in eastern Europe. It has no place in a free country and the Government should put a stop to it, now.
