Express Scripts has gone public today with information that they were contacted early in October by extortionists who threatened to disclose personal and medical information on millions of the company’s customers if Express Scripts doesn’t meet their ransom demands.
The ransom request was sent by mail and accompanied by the names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, prescription details, of 75 of the firm’s 50 million customers.
George Paz, Express Scripts’ chief executive, said the company will not pay the ransom, but declined to say how much money the extortionists demanded.
Express Scripts is one the largest pharmacy benefit management companies, and handles approximately 500 million prescriptions a year.
A company spokesman said they contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigations when the received the ransom demand last month, but still don’t know how the stolen information was obtained.
What makes this situation unique is Express Scripts’ unwillingness to pay up, according to Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute, a computer security training group.
“There are thousands of companies that have already paid off extortionists in return for not having their customers’ data exposed,” Paller said. “This is especially true in the financial industry, as some banks are now getting more than one new extortion demand a day.”
Paller said few cases like Express Scripts’, involving cyber and data extortion, become public because their victims usually prefer to pay the ransom and avoid the publicity.
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Tags: cyber crime, data theft, Express Scripts, extortion, ID theft, ID theft protection, Identity Theft, identity theft protection, Life Lock, LifeLock, LifeLock identity theft protection
Well I have to hand it to them for being creative at least. Most criminals just grab your data and go to town with it. The scary thing about this ransom situation is there is no way to know if the theives are taking the ransom money, then selling the information to someone else. There is no way to tell if data has been copied. If a company thinks it has kept it under wraps, you may never know if your info is out there in the hands of some criminal. That’s why Lifelock does its credit monitoring. There is really no way to make sure your info doesn’t get into the hands of theives. All you can really do is make it useless with identity theft protection like lifelock.
You’ve hit the ball out the park! Irncedbiel!