AMCA Breach: Many More Impacted Healthcare Firms Come Forward
Many more healthcare companies in the United States published press releases last week to inform customers that they had been impacted by the data breach suffered by the American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA).
All of the organizations used the same press release template, with the only difference being the number of impacted patients and the phone number that people can call for more details.
For some patients, the attackers gained access to their name, address, phone number, date of birth, dates of service, balance information, payment card or banking information, and treatment provider information. Others had the same information compromised, but without the payment card and banking information.
The list of affected firms that came forward last week includes American Esoteric Laboratories (534,500 impacted and another 7,400 with financial data), Sunrise Medical Laboratories (412,000 impacted and 15,000 with financial data), CBLPath (145,100 impacted and 3,800 with financial data), Laboratory Medicine Consultants (143,400 impacted and 4,200 with financial data), Austin Pathology Associates (44,700 impacted and 1,800 with financial data), South Texas Dermatopathology (14,900 impacted and another 1,200 with financial data), Pathology Solutions (12,700 impacted and 600 with financial data).
The list of companies that had less than 10,000 impacted patients includes Laboratory of Dermatopathology ADX (4,000 patients impacted and another 240 with financial data compromised), Seacoast Pathology (9,200 impacted and 800 with financial data), Western Pathology Consultants (4,200 impacted and 350 with financial data), Arizona Dermatopathology (6,500 impacted and 500 with financial data), and Natera (unknown number of impacted patients).
Clinical Pathology Laboratories (CPL) also reported last week that 2.2 million of its patients had personal information stolen and another 34,500 had financial information compromised.
The breach at AMCA, which is also known as Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau, came to light in early June when two of its biggest customers, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, filed 8-K forms with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Quest said the incident impacted nearly 12 million of its patients, while LabCorp said the breach affected roughly 7.7 million of its customers.
It was later revealed that over 422,000 patients of BioReference Laboratories and half a million patients of CareCentrix were also impacted.
AMCA, which faces several class actions, revealed in mid-June that the breach had already cost it millions of dollars and announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid off most of its workforce.
The company’s investigation into the incident revealed that the hackers may have had access to its systems since as early as August 2018. The breach was discovered only in March 2019 after AMCA was informed that many payment cards used on its web portal had been used for fraudulent charges.
Investigators could not determine exactly which individuals were impacted so it had to be assumed that everyone who had information stored on AMCA servers was hit.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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