Medicaid Hack Update: 500,000 Records and 280,000 SSNs Stolen

An anonymous reader writes "Utah's Medicaid hack estimate has grown a second time. This time we have gone from over 180,000 Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) recipients having their personal information stolen to a grand total of 780,000. More specifically, the state now says approximately 500,000 victims had sensitive personal information stolen and 280,000 victims had their Social Security numbers (SSNs) compromised."

Comments

Not to be rude about it, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't the darknets where these SSN's and identities trade put a certain value on the credit history and wealth of the individuals involved? Realistically, who is going to want SSN's of a bunch of poor people on Medicaid? That's not to say that this excuses Utah from data security, of course, or makes this any less of a lesson in the need for said security. But I don't think too many of these things are going to end up resulting in actual identity thefts, not if the people who buy them have any clue what they're buying.

Although it does present an amusing image of a bunch of Ukrainian hackers trying to get credit cards in the names of people who have no income and wondering why none of them are going through.

Re:Not to be rude about it, but

[vlm]

who is going to want SSN's of a bunch of poor people on Medicaid?

If you can fog a mirror you can get a car loan. A car can be driven across the border, to a chop shop, etc. If you're poor the interest rate will be 15% but if you stole the info and intend to never make a payment, no one cares. My mom had zero income, and someone with her info bought a pickup truck in Texas and disappeared into Mexico. She had no problem removing it from her credit history as it was beyond ridiculous, but if she were not so lucky, then it could have been a problem.

You don't need any money for an illegal to use your information to hold a job (IRS etc) or get free medical care. Actually a poor person has much better medical coverage than I do... so their info is more valuable than mine. The IRS thing with stolen SS numbers is no problem unless the illegal claims 15 exemptions and pays no tax.. then you have to pay their tax for them, or prove you're not working both as a sysadmin and a restaurant dishwasher simultaneously.

You don't need any money or credit record to visit a "check cashing place / payday loan joint" with a fake check, walk out with cash, and leave the victim to figure it all out.