Hackers Get Home Addresses, SS Numbers & Sensitive Medical Data of 500,000 Medical Patients

A file containing names and contact details on 491,840 people has made the rounds online since at least earlier this month, according to French cybersecurity journalist Damien Bancal, who runs the Zataz blog. The data includes home addresses, phone numbers, emails, social security numbers and other sensitive medical information pertaining to medications, pregnancy and diseases such as HIV.

While Bancal first noted the hack in a February 14 blog post, AFP and the French daily Liberation followed up more recently, with the latter finding the data was likely stolen from roughly 30 medical labs located around northwestern France.

“We can find this file in seven different places on the internet,” Bancal told AFP on Tuesday, adding that although hackers initially negotiated for the data through a Telegram chat, the stolen material was later released for free after a dispute among the blackhatters.

Data on 500,000 people is already huge and nothing prevents me from thinking that the hackers still have a lot more.