BianLian and RansomHouse groups claim successful attacks on Albany ENT & Allergy Services

Albany, New York-based Albany ENT & Allergy Services said it suffered a major data breach that compromised the sensitive personal information of more than 200,000 individuals.

Albany ENT & Allergy Services offers specialised care for pediatric and adult patients with medical and surgical problems involving the ears, nose, throat, and related head and neck structures.

In a recent notice of data breach filed with the Attorney General of Maine, the medical practice said that on March 27, it identified suspicious activity in its internal network and immediately launched an investigation with the assistance of third-party cyber security experts to understand the nature and scope of the security incident.

“AENT determined that, between March 23, 2023 and April 4, 2023, an unauthorised actor may have had access to certain systems that stored personal and protected health information,” AENT said.

On May 2, AENT’s investigation concluded that certain employee and patient information was present within the servers accessed by the threat actors. 

 

The compromised information includes names and other personal identifiers along with patients’ social security numbers. According to AENT’s filing with the Attorney General of Maine, at least 224,486 individuals have been impacted by the security incident.

The practice said that it has no evidence of any “identity theft or fraud in connection with this incident,” however, the possibility of the same cannot be ruled out. AENT is in the process of contacting all affected individuals and is providing a year of complimentary credit monitoring and identity restoration services through Kroll.

Meanwhile, two separate ransomware groups have claimed responsibility for the cyber attack on AENT. According to DataBreaches, on April 23, the BianLian ransomware group listed the practice on its data leak site and claimed to be in possession of 630 GB of files. 

 

On May 11, the group leaked the allegedly stolen data in multiple parts. The leaked data included personal, financial, and business data along with accounting information and more.

On April 28, the notorious RansomHouse group also listed Albany ENT & Allergy Services on its data leak site and claimed to infiltrate AENT’s internal systems on March 27. The group claimed to have siphoned 2TB of data from the practice and shared proof of the same. A couple of weeks later, RansomHouse leaked the allegedly stolen data on the dark web.

AENT hasn’t commented on the reports of multiple threat actors breaching its internal network yet. It is also not clear whether the medical practice received any ransom demand from the groups or whether the claims of the threat actors are indeed true.