“American hospitals affected by Heart Bleed ‘- Volkskrant

By: Thomas van der Kolk – 08/20/14, 17:54

© think stock.

The theft of data from approximately 4.5 million patients from an American hospital chain, which took place earlier this year, has been made possible by the infamous Heart Bleed bug. That the head of the Internet security firm TrustedSec told Bloomberg. If his claims are correct is about the biggest victim of Heart Bleed until now.

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  © heartbleed.com.

• Heart Bleed?
  Heart Bleed is a programming error in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption protocols that are seen as the heart of the security of Internet transactions. Using OpenSSL is recognizable by the green lock icon that appears next to the web address in your browser. In April there was a flaw discovered in an extension – say an additional piece of code – OpenSSL. A mistake with major consequences, since it allows attackers able to relatively easily penetrate inside the computer’s memory and, eg, secure data and secret keys intercept.

Last Monday was Community Health Systems, the second largest for-profit hospital chain in the United States, announced that hackers have broken into the computer systems of hospitals.

That would probably be done in April and June of this year, and the attacks were coming from China. Using ‘sophisticated malware hackers patient data would have been able to copy. The exact process was unknown.

Biggest vulnerability
According to David Kennedy of TrustedSec have sources close to the investigation into the burglary said that hackers have used Heart Bleed. Use That is a bug in OpenSSL, very popular software that is meant to secure Internet connections and shield for malicious persons, which came to light in April this year. Internet Experts then spoke of “the greatest vulnerability of the Internet since it is used massively. The extension of the flaw called Heartbeat, and discovered the leak was therefore soon Heart Bleed baptized.

It seems, therefore, that American hospitals have been touched by this’ digital brain hemorrhage. During the burglary are not only names and addresses even social security numbers (say, the American version of the bsn number) captured. According to Community Health Systems financial and medical data is not stolen. The chain and the FBI, which is investigating the hack, make no further announcements. The claims of Kennedy they have not responded.

The British network for parents Mumsnet and the Canadian Tax were hitherto known for the biggest victims of Heart Bleed.

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