Information of 5,400 Patients Compromised due to Hacking of Valley View Hospital

Gjsentinel.com reported on 14th March, 2014 stating that Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, US says a computer virus hijacked personal non-medical details of 5,400 of its patients.

The hospital claimed that they discovered the computer virus back in January 2013, and immediately hired an IT (information technology) forensic firm for investigation.

The forensic firm investigators revealed that the complicated computer virus captured screen shots of Internet web pages and stored the images in an encrypted hidden file of a system. This information in the secret folder varied for each individual affected by the unfortunate incident.

In some cases the files carried only names but in maximum cases, names, DOB (date of birth), phone numbers, bank account and credit card information, SSN (social security numbers) and other information were available.

Gjsentinel.com published a statement on 14th March, 2014 quoting the hospital as "the hospital discovered this on 23rd January, 2014 and immediately shut down incoming and outgoing Internet traffic to quarantine all information. Steps were also undertaken to eliminate the virus from the system."

However, it is not clear whether the information ever left the system.

Postindependent.com published news on 14th March, 2014 quoting Gary Brewer, Chief Executive Officer of Valley View Hospital Association, for apologizing for any inconvenience or unease that might have been caused to the hospitals patients, employees and their families and said that they take liability to guard their patient's details very seriously."

Gavrell did not know whether the data collected in the encrypted files was limited to patients during the time-frame in which the computer virus was active or patients out of that time-period might also have been impacted.

Emails announcing the unfortunate attack were sent to all affected individuals on 17th March, 2014.

Finally, this is not the first time that computers of hospital have been compromised by computer virus as University of Washington (UW) Medicine, Seattle, US informed an estimated 90,000 of its patients back in November 2013 that their medical records were stolen in a malware attack in October 2013. Out of 90,000 odd patients, SSN of 15,000 sufferers might have been embezzled by the attackers.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/27/2014