Security News > 2021 > February > Half a million stolen French medical records, drowned in feeble excuses

Here in France, we've just experienced the country's biggest ever data breach of customer records, involving some half a million medical patients.

Data journalism couldn't be easier, and indeed the newspaper hacks have been on the beat, contacting the doctors listed in the file and phoning up some of the patients on their mobile numbers to ask how they feel about the data breach.

Some dark web spivs began discussing in Turkish-language channels on Telegram about how to sell some medical records stolen from a French hospital.

It turns out the various dates on the patient records refer not to doctors' appointments but to when patients had to submit a test specimen: in other words, the data is likely to have been stolen from French bio-medical laboratories conducting the specimen analysis.

No patient records entered into these newer systems can be found in the stolen file, only pre-upgrade stuff entered into Mega-Bus, apparently.

The much-quoted myth that sharing medical records between big data operators is safe because the data is anonymised has once again been shown to be just that - utter bollocks.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/02/26/something_for_the_weekend/