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Backup Tapes With 2 Million Medical Records Stolen
Lucas123 writes "A vehicle used by an off-site archive company to transport patient data was broken into on March 17. The University of Miami just made the theft public last week, saying the thieves removed a transport case carrying the school's six computer backup tapes. On those tapes were more than 2 million medical records. In fact, the archive company waited 48 hours before notifying the university itself. A University spokeswoman said the school has stopped shipping backup tapes off-site for now."
This case should be pretty simple to solve. Just track down whoever buys a 9-track tape reader off eBay in the next month and nail him to the wall.
John
From TFA:
After learning about the data breach, the university contacted local computer forensics companies to see if data on a similar set of backup tapes could be accessed. Menendez said security experts at Terremark Worldwide Inc. "tried for days" to decode the data but could not because of proprietary compression and encoding tools used to write data to the storage tapes.
Proprietary compression and encoding tools? the article reeks of FUD but proprietary technologies still aren't without their faults...but eh, it's not like they used this "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0", right?
What would YOU pay for 2 million social security numbers?
Transporting confidential data off-site via any medium, including the Internet, without industry-recognized encryption (not something that is proprietary and untested) ought to be a criminal offense with severe penalties.
TFA talks about proprietary compression and encoding and not about encryption. I simply do not believe that it is difficult to recover that data - whatever proprietary software wrote those files can be obtained from somewhere for a price. You can probably Google the file extension or some information in the header to determine the format and/or software. "The university feels confident that the person who took [the tapes] doesn't know what they have." They do now! "Even though I am confident that our patients' data is safe, we felt that in the best interest of the physician-patient relationship we should be transparent in this matter." That data is not safe. At best it is in an obscure, but not secure format.
It's incredible, really. Since TrueCrypt 5.0 arrived,I don't even carry my work laptop or flash drives around without either full disk encryption or encrypted container files on them, and they do not contain anything as sensitive as 2 million medical records.
On the black market these days, a full identity (name, SSN, address, bank information, etc) can go for $14 each. If the tapes had full identities, that's 2 million x $14 = $28 million payday for a bunch of crooks. Even assume a "volume discount" for these guys and they're still in the many million dollar range. Even if it's just name, address, and SSN there's some value on the black market for these tapes.
When you're breaking into a vehicle filled with stuff that looks like computer equipment, it's hard to know whether the data is going to be social security numbers (valuable), credit card numbers (valuable), medical records (valuable if there's addresses and SSNs), or routine corporate records (not all that valuable). Enough data brokers are sloppy enough with their security that there's a good chance to get some identity information that has value.
These guys were either extremely lucky or knew exactly what they were doing. Or they're complete idiots who are wondering why these tapes won't play on their 8-track player.
The article is very careful to phrase it as "2 million medical records." I somehow doubt that this means the medical records of 2 million separate individuals -- if it did, surely the news outlet would have said so, as it is much more dramatic. I bet a "medical record" is a single row in the database, and what was really stolen was a DB with 2 million records (as in "rows") in it. I seriously doubt the medical records of 2 million people are all collected on a single set of tapes.
For Example: Alot of people don't want to publically share that they have STDs etc. Especially not if the files are cross linked with a list of their sexual partners.
While sale for identity fraud would most likely be the most profitable, there are alternative uses for this data. Given the enterprising nature of most criminals, this is a gold mine.
Multi key, multi volume encryption: Lock each of the tapes in a different cabinet in the van, each with a different key.
Security through obscurity: Remove large sign on van reading "Secure Data Transport, 'Transporting your valuable data since 1991'" replace with "Flowers By Irene"
Introduce comprehensive staff security training: Hold their families hostage, and tell them that if they lose the data...
Tape is so last millennium. Anybody who's anybody backs up to hard drives across the internet.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
More often than not, homeless people, and petty crooks just steal AYTHING out of cars hoping to get pennies on the dollar for whatever they stole. A nice looking, shiny case was probably thought to have some nice stuff in it, other than tapes. I bet the tapes are in some sewer drain or dumpster by now, and the case is being pawned for 5 dollars.
..........FULL STOP.
Some vendors like Sun and IBM give the key management stations away for free if you use encryption. People just do not understand how hi-tech tape is nowadays. Everyones perception of tape is old DAT, people need to look at Sun T10000, IBM TSxxxx or LT04. If you are archiving data for a long time there is no other ecological option than tape. It's longevity (of the quality products) has been proven over the last 20yrs. Tape is not that interesting, but it is like brushing you teeth, you know it is a good thing for the long run.
There's nothing in the article that says they were encrypted. They were compressed and some kind of encoding was involved. But encoding could be any number of things, and quite possibly the coding used by medical records systems to compact common terms to numbers. It could be hard to make use of the data. But if it was an "inside job", or the perps can get the software used on this, it can be cracked easily. This is not strong encryption.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Get your most closely kept personal thought: .doc with a password lock. .rar with extraction precluded .rar because so far they ain't impressed. .pgp and print the hex of it out,
put it in the Word
Stock it deep in the
by the ludicrous length and the strength of a reputedly
dictionary-attack-proof string of characters
(this, imperative to thwart all the disparagers
of privacy: the NSA and Homeland S).
You better PGP the
You better take the
scan that into a TIFF. Then, if you seek redoubt
for your data, scramble up the order of the pixels
with a one-time pad that describes the fun time had by the thick-soled-
boot-wearing stomper who danced to produce random
claptrap, all the intervals in between which, set in tandem
with the stomps themselves, begat a seed of math unguessable.
Ain't no complaint about this cipher that's redressable!
Best of all, your secret: nothing extant could extract it.
By 2025 a children's Speak & Spell could crack it.
You can't hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past.
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
"On the black market these days, a full identity (name, SSN, address, bank information, etc) can go for $14 each."
Good answer. Next question: Doesn't all modern tape backup software encrypt all data?
Even my personal DVD backups are encrypted automatically.
First, if your recovering from an off site backup tape, something went down and it's going to take a while to get it running again. Decrypting can't add much more than 20 - 30% (number pulled from appropriate nether region) to the time. If it does you need to upgrade those C-64's you're using in the server room.
Second, if the data is bulk stuff going off site, it's obviously not a primary rapid-response data restore. It's likely historical and most likely business data with very little clinical information. Probably just ICD9 / CPT codes (diagnosis and procedure codes, look it up only if you're very, very bored).
And thirdly, if your docs are so addicted to the computers that they're going to kill people without them, they should start rethinking their approach to medicine. That sort of historical data just isn't that important. We've treated people for centuries without computers. Having all that clinical information at your fingertips is great, wonderful and certainly to be encouraged, but lack of it isn't life threatening.
Having Google go down on the other hand ....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If I ran a medical insurance company, those tapes could let me know whose applications to deny and whose to accept. Very valuable indeed.
But it's all in the name of tracking your every move, so I guess it's OK. Your network should be secure (they don't set that up)
The software they use should be secure (they didn't write it)
The method you use to transmit your claims should be secure (they don't set that up)
All you have to tell them is "don't email claim/medical record files" I have taught literally hundreds and hundreds of shockingly stupid people (the people at your doctor's office or the hospital that do the billing are almost certainly the lowest paid people in the chain...in the ballpark of minimum wage) how to zip and encrypt a file so they can email it. With 7zip it is a 3 step process.
Insurance companies have to track your every move when it involves you going to the doctor/hospital.
Complete idiots don't read Slashdot. Oh, wait ...