Hacker forum post claims UnitedHealth paid $22 million ransom in bid to recover data

WASHINGTON : A put up on a hacker dialogue board smartly most in vogue by cybercriminals has claimed UnitedHealth Neighborhood paid $22 million in a portray to enhance rep entry to to data and systems encrypted by the “Blackcat” ransomware gang, in accordance with two researchers.

Neither UnitedHealth nor the hackers fervent possess commented on the alleged ransom fee, but a cryptocurrency tracing firm partly corroborated the claim on Monday.

It’s miles celebrated for gigantic companies that possess been victimized by ransomware gangs to judge to pay the hackers to obtain control of their networks, particularly in circumstances the put a necessary disruption to possibilities and companions occurred.

The dialogue board put up, dated Sunday, talked a pair of accomplice of Blackcat used to be guilty for the intrusion into UnitedHealth. The message, allegedly from the accomplice, included a hyperlink exhibiting that any individual had moved about 350 bitcoins, now value about $23 million because the value of the cryptocurrency rises, from one digital currency pockets to one other.

The owner or house owners of the respective wallets is now not publicly on hand, but blockchain prognosis firm TRM Labs talked about the plug assert of the funds used to be “linked to AlphV,” incessantly identified as Blackcat, noting it had viewed that take care of passe to secure ransom funds from varied AlphV victims.

Requested whether or now not it had paid the ransom, UnitedHealth talked about finest that it used to be “centered on the investigation and the recovery.”

Blackcat has now not answered to repeated messages from Reuters sent over several days. Reuters would possibly perchance now not straight resolve how to reach the purported accomplice hacker team or to rep entry to the cybercrime dialogue board the put the put up used to be made, though it used to be ready to survey screenshots taken independently by two researchers, at the side of Recorded Future’s Dmitry Smilyanets.

The fracture-in at UnitedHealth’s Alternate Healthcare unit, which has sparked disruption all the device by device of the United States, has been the object of online intrigue. Blackcat claimed final week that it had stolen millions of exquisite records within the hack, finest to rapidly delete its put up without explanation.

Within the meantime, the anguish has persevered to unfold all the device by device of the U.S. medical plot as Alternate Healthcare’s billing services remain tremulous. The American Scientific Association on Monday asked the Biden administration to create emergency funds on hand to physicians anguish by the outage.