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LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

theglobeandmail.com

21–30 of 53 posts

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#21

“For customers who are concerned, LifeLabs has offered to cover one year of data protection that includes dark web monitoring as well as identity theft insurance.” That’s it? If I was Canadian I’d want to see execs going to jail and or their contract yanked. If they switched over to using a webapp or chromeos on the desktop things would probably be much more secure. But that’s not going to happen, cuz it’s owned by t…

[deleted]

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#22
The numbers: 15 million people in a country of 37 million had personal information "potentially accessed in this breach." In several provinces, LifeLabs is dominant and sometimes the only option for lab work.

Here is the CEO's letter to those 15 million or so victims: https://customernotice.lifelabs.com

Concerned Canadians could/should contact their government about this incident. I don't have a deep link but assume it's buried in this maze: https://www.priv.gc.ca/

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#23
post #20

> Through proactive surveillance, LifeLabs recently identified a cyber-attack I'm confused, how do you pass from "proactive surveillance" to "there's a ransom to pay"?

They probably asked the attackers to provide info about the stolen data, but they only help in return of a payment.

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#24
post #2

If you don’t live in Canada, you might not know that LifeLabs has a virtual monopoly on the lab business. If your doctor wants you to take a blood test, you go to LifeLabs. Whomever broke into their systems knows a great deal about the private health information of a large fraction of Canadians.

Do they perform some back-office analysis function for Quebec's public health system, or is this get another way Quebec is different from the rest of Canada? Here in Quebec we generally get our blood drawn for tests at a local public clinic called a CLSC, and can eventually view the results in a public government web system, but I'm not sure where the actual analysis happens.

In my experience, the CLSC sends your blood to a nearby hospital's lab for testing. We also have CDL which does private testing.

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#25

Just a few months ago I had to take a series of tests with LifeLabs (blood, urine, physical, etc) to update my immigration papers. Did you know you cannot choose where to take these tests? You are more or less forced to use LifeLabs because the doctors designated by the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada) only partner with LifeLabs to do these tests, it’s an ugly monopoly that is impossible to fight a…

Canada is full of such stuff. Ditto banks, telcos, dairy, eggs, liquor and so on.

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#27

“For customers who are concerned, LifeLabs has offered to cover one year of data protection that includes dark web monitoring as well as identity theft insurance.” That’s it? If I was Canadian I’d want to see execs going to jail and or their contract yanked. If they switched over to using a webapp or chromeos on the desktop things would probably be much more secure. But that’s not going to happen, cuz it’s owned by t…

The whole "one year of data protection" thing is always a joke. It's not like my demographic information changes every year. There's a reason those sorts of records are worth so much on the black market—they're incredibly durable.

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something in this story that doesn't ring true. You knew from the moment you walked into the laboratory that their data handling practices were inadequate and prone to being hacked/leaked. How? You tried to explain this to their secretaries and nurses. Why bother when it's obvious they can't/won't do anything about it? Why not contacting their management or IT?

To be fair to life labs, at least they don’t dox you aloud to an entire waiting room. I witnessed that happen to a few prominent financiers in Toronto while I was getting some bloodwork done. It was terrifying within about 5 minutes I had all the personal information I’d need to do some seriously nefarious things. This happens on most every occasion I visit a clinic in Canada. Nurses and secretaries do not care.

I wonder if it's more that they just don't understand - also habits are hard to change. "it's always been this way"

Not sure what the solution is.

Re: LifeLabs pays ransom after data breach affecting up to 15M Canadians

#30
I wonder if medical test results (which I think could include STDs and chronic conditions) were included in the data breach? The downside of EMR is that they can get hacked. If so that can be incredibly personal information and way more serious than the usually the name, birth date and VISA numbers.

I guess in the future with all these data breaches one will be able to get any private information on just about anyone by paying for it on the dark net. Basically there will be darknet data brokers who basically have unlimited inventory of information because they aggregate from the various data breaches.

Will people get spam calls from a call center in a low cost country that bring up your test results from LifeLabs and threaten to share them with your employer or significant other unless you pay up?

If not now, this will be happening in the near future.

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