500,000 sensitive personal data hacked
Hacker attack on the data of over 500,000 vulnerable people
Among the captured data are, among other things, confidential information about missing and detained persons
Check Point places the cyber attack on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the context of attacks on the health sector. Due to the sensitivity of the data, the industry is particularly attractive for hackers, who obviously do not take the affected people into account.
The criminals captured the data of more than half a million people on Wednesday, as the ICRC announced. The data were collected from about 60 national offices of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The ICRC is not yet aware of who is behind the attack. The attack was directed against an external company in Switzerland, which was commissioned by the ICRC to store data. So far, however, no information has been leaked or made publicly available.
Lotem Finkelsteen, Head of Threat Intelligence at Check Point Software Technologies
“According to our data, healthcare is one of the industries most often targeted by hackers,” reports Lotem Finkelsteen, Head of Threat Intelligence and Research at Check Point Software Technologies, ” and this sector will continue to be one of the most frequently attacked targets in 2022. We are talking about 830 weekly attacks on average in 2021, which represents an increase of over 71 percent in just one year, compared to the previous year. Hacker groups are aware of the sensitivity of the data from this area and therefore see it as an opportunity to get money quickly. In addition, hospitals and other healthcare organizations cannot afford to stop operations for maintenance work, as it could literally be a matter of life and death. By the way, the hackers were targeting the most sensitive data of the organization here at the Red Cross and tried to exert as much pressure as possible. Now the big risk is the leakage of the data, which could have devastating consequences for the victims. Unfortunately, we expect the trend of attacks against health organizations to continue in 2022.“
