Hackers Behind the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Just Received a $22 Million Payment

Hackers Behind the Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack Just Received a $22 Million Payment

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The ransomware assault targeting medical firm Change Healthcare has been one of the vital disruptive in years, crippling pharmacies throughout the US—together with these in hospitals—and resulting in severe snags within the supply of prescribed drugs nationwide for 10 days and counting. Now, a dispute inside the legal underground has revealed a brand new improvement in that unfolding debacle: One of many companions of the hackers behind the assault factors out that these hackers, a gaggle often called AlphV or BlackCat, acquired a $22 million transaction that appears very very similar to a big ransom cost.

On March 1, a Bitcoin handle related to AlphV acquired 350 bitcoins in a single transaction, or near $22 million primarily based on trade charges on the time. Then, two days later, somebody describing themselves as an affiliate of AlphV—one of many hackers who work with the group to penetrate sufferer networks—posted to the cybercriminal underground discussion board RAMP that AlphV had cheated them out of their share of the Change Healthcare ransom, pointing to the publicly visible $22 million transaction on Bitcoin’s blockchain as proof.

That implies, in response to Dmitry Smilyanets, the researcher for safety agency Recorded Future who first noticed the publish, that Change Healthcare has seemingly paid AlphV’s ransom. “You may see the variety of cash that landed there. You don’t see that form of transaction so usually,” Smilyanets says. “There’s proof of a big quantity touchdown within the AlphV-controlled Bitcoin pockets. And this affiliate connects this handle to the assault on Change Healthcare. So it’s seemingly that the sufferer paid the ransom.”

When WIRED reached out to United Healthcare, which owns Change Healthcare, a spokesperson declined to reply whether or not it had paid a ransom to AlphV, responding solely that “we’re centered on the investigation proper now.”

Each Recorded Future and TRM Labs, a blockchain evaluation agency, join the Bitcoin handle that acquired the $22 million cost to the AlphV hackers. TRM Labs says it might probably hyperlink the handle to funds from two different AlphV victims in January.

If Change Healthcare did pay a $22 million ransom, it could not solely signify an enormous payday for AlphV, but in addition a harmful precedent for the well being care business, argues Brett Callow, a ransomware-focused researcher with safety agency Emsisoft. Each ransomware cost, he says, each funds future assaults by the group accountable and suggests to different ransomware predators that they need to attempt the identical playbook—on this case, attacking well being care companies that sufferers rely on.

“If Change did pay, it is problematic,” says Callow. “It highlights the profitability of assaults on the well being care sector. Ransomware gangs are nothing if not predictable: In the event that they discover a specific sector to be profitable, they’ll assault it again and again, rinse and repeat.”

The self-described AlphV affiliate who first posted proof of the cost on RAMP, and who goes by the identify “notchy,” complained that AlphV had apparently collected the $22 million ransom from Change Healthcare after which stored the whole sum, reasonably than share the earnings with their hacking associate as that they had allegedly agreed. “watch out everybody and cease take care of ALPHV,” notchy wrote.

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