Title: Cyberattack Costs UnitedHealth’s Health Sector Millions, Revenue Still Surges
In a recent report by UnitedHealth Group, it was revealed that ransomware attacks have been disrupting the healthcare systems in the United States since February, leading to an estimated loss of $872 million. The impact of these ransomware attacks includes $593 million in direct costs for network attack responses and $279 million in business interruption costs.
Despite these challenges, UnitedHealth Group reported a nearly $8 billion year-over-year increase in first-quarter revenue, reaching $99.8 billion. The company attributed this growth to prudent measures taken in anticipation of potential delays in claims processing due to network attacks, thus setting aside an additional $800 million as claims reserves.
Change Healthcare, the largest healthcare service provider in the US and the largest pharmacy payment exchange platform, boasts transactions with over 70,000 pharmacies using its platform. Additionally, UnitedHealth has contracts with over 1.6 million healthcare professionals and 8,000 medical institutions across all 50 states in the US. The company is actively working to mitigate the impact of network attacks on consumers and healthcare institutions while expanding economic assistance to affected medical facilities.
Following a network attack incident in February this year, UnitedHealth’s subsidiary Optum had previously shut down Change Healthcare systems and services, leaving doctors and medical institutions nationwide unable to bill insurance companies or submit insurance claims.
The company attributed the incident to the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware group, which claimed to have stolen 6 terabytes of data in the breach. In mid-March, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced a further investigation into whether protected health information was compromised in the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
A day before UnitedHealth’s first-quarter 2024 report release, the RansomHub ransomware group posted screenshots online of patient and company data stolen from the compromised Change Healthcare systems. This data was reportedly obtained from former ALPHV-affiliated company Notchy, which is currently collaborating with RansomHub to extort Change Healthcare.
On Monday (May 15th), the ransomware group issued a warning to Change Healthcare, stating that they have five days left to pay the ransom, threatening to sell the previously stolen data to the highest bidder if the ransom is not paid by the deadline.
Reference: UnitedHealth: Change Healthcare cyberattack caused $872 million loss