Scope of Bold Virginia Data Breach — with Ransom Note and All — Not Fully Known
Many of you saw the unbelievable news about hackers stealing millions of personal pharmaceutical records from the state of Virginia’s prescription drug database then demanding $10 million in ransom. Well, the update is…well, there really is no update. Almost a full week later and the scope of the breach is not yet fully known. We do know that the breach occurred in the statewide system for monitoring prescriptions for the most powerful painkillers and narcotics such as Oxycodone, Vicodin, morphine and Valium. In addition, the compromised data included patient names, birth dates, addresses, medications that were prescribed to them and when.
According to sources close to the FBI, “it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, but they do have the ability to find the needle and they will.”
They better move pretty quick to find that needle!! According to the ransom note, the hackers were giving the state of Virginia seven days to “pony up” the cash, or they were going to sell the data to the highest bidder. Law enforcement better move quickly…tomorrow is the seventh day!
What do you think about this? Is law enforcement further along in finding these criminals than they are letting on? According to the AP article we linked to, it does not seem that they have made much headway.
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If the FBI is hot on the trail of the crooks, I would want anything in the news media quoting sources close to the FBI to be other than what we are seeing.
Because if they said “We have narrowed down to which city they are in, and are doing a data analysis, have judge on standby to issue warrants just as soon as we nail their building.” You know darn well the hackers would be loading a van with their stuff, and evacuating to an alternate site.
Or if they said “We now know they are in Bulgaria. The police there are helping us. Their military also helping us. We expect to crack the case any day now.” You know darn well the hackers would be headed across the border to establish a new base of operations.
How often do the police give briefings regarding their progress on some on-going investigation?
I have seen C-Span hearings where Congress wants to know what is going on, where Senators ask if they could be briefed in an executive session. That’s where C-Span cameras not allowed. They are told that details of an on-going investigation cannot be revealed.
What I hope they are doing is attempting to pay the ransom & try to catch the people who pick up the ransom.
There was a kidnapping incident in Japan, where the kidnappers had done some tests with ATMs to find out how long after some transaction, it hits the central banking records. I think they had some insider to help calculate this. So the ransom was to go in this account they had opened. They figured that they would withdraw up to the maximum from ATMs around Tokyo and other cities, and be long gone from the ATMs before the bank could tell the police where to go.
Well the bank, in cooperation with the police, secretly did some reprogramming, so that when THAT ACCOUNT was accessed, there would be a priority dispatch to the police, within seconds, of precisely where. The kidnappers were caught.
I hope the FBI has people at least as clever as in that incident, and don’t let the natural arrogance of law enforcement types get in the way of utilizing such strategic thinking.
Oops, I meant to write:
If the FBI is hot on the trail of the crooks, I would NOT want anything in the news media quoting sources close to the FBI to be other than what we are seeing.