Medicare Data of Over 600K Beneficiaries Breached

A massive data breach has exposed the personal information of 612,000 Medicare beneficiaries and potentially impacted numerous organizations, including Maximus Federal Services, a government contractor. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that they are informing the affected individuals, as the breach may have compromised their names, Social Security numbers, medical histories, diagnoses, and other personal details. Fortunately, CMS reassures that none of their systems or Health and Human Services systems have been affected. As a response, CMS and Maximus are providing two years of free credit monitoring services to those “potentially affected” and guiding them on obtaining a new Medicare Beneficiary Identifier number if necessary.

The data breach exploited a security vulnerability in the third-party software called MOVEit, utilized by Maximus for file transfer during the Medicare appeals process. So far, the ongoing investigation by CMS indicates that up to 11 million people, including the 612,000 Medicare beneficiaries, may have been impacted by the breach that occurred from May 27-31. During this period, an unauthorized party gained access to files stored in the MOVEit application.

In response to unusual activity detected on May 30, Maximus investigated and halted the use of the MOVEit software followed by notifying CMS of the incident on June 2. Reports suggest that this breach could have affected over 400 organizations and compromised the information of around 23 million individuals. The attack has reportedly been claimed by the Russian ransomware group Clop.

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