Security flaw Heartbleed was first reported back in April. Various hacking attacks have happened since then but the biggest so far involves Community Health Systems, a U.S. Hospital group.
CHS was actually attacked twice. Once in April, shortly after the bug was reported and before the hospital group could implement a patch for its system, and once in June. Hackers got into the CHS system by exploiting vulnerabilities caused by Heartbleed in equipment provided by Juniper Networks Inc.
The CHS network use a virtual private network to secure the system as it provides remote access to employees. However, hackers were still able to get their hands on the private credentials. Once inside the network, the hackers accessed a database and took millions of social security numbers alongside other patient information, as per David Kennedy, TrustedSec LLC CEO. Kennedy was the first to report that CHS was attacked using the Heartbleed flaw.
According to CHS, unauthorized access was documented on records for individuals who have been referred to or received medical service from affiliated doctors over the past five years. Investigators, however, have not yet determined what the motive was behind the attack although it has been reported that the hacking originated from China.
The Chinese embassy, however, said it did not know of the attack. "Chinese laws prohibit cyber crimes of all forms and Chinese government has done whatever it can to combat such activities. Making groundless accusations at others is not constructive at all and does not contribute to the solution of the issue," said embassy spokesman Geng Shuang in an email statement.
CHS informed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of the breach Monday, although the filing was brief and offered few details about the attack. It did state, however, that CHS hired FireEye Inc.'s Mandiant forensics unit to investigate and that about 4.5 million individuals were compromised by the hacking attack. This number tags the CHS incident as the most extensive hacking attack associated with the Heartbleed bug.
Heartbleed is a major flaw in OpenSSL encryption technology which is widely used by various entities for securing sites, devices and other electronic products. It works by making encryption keys accessible, which hackers can then use to undo encryption on different kinds of data. Think of it like giving criminals keys to a house. No matter how many locks are used on the property, this won't keep the bad guys out if the bad guys have the keys to open the locks.
