testing services in Canada, has suffered a massive data breach that
exposed the personal and medical information of nearly 15 million
Canadians customers.
The company announced[1]
the breach in a press release posted on its website, revealing that
an unknown attacker unauthorizedly accessed its computer systems
last month and stole customers’ information, including their:
- Names
- Addresses
- Email addresses
- Login information
- Passwords, for their LifeLabs account
- Dates of birth
- Health card numbers
- Lab test results
The Toronto-based company discovered the data breach at the end
of October, but the press release does not say anything about the
identity of the attacker(s) and how they managed to infiltrate its
systems.
However, LifeLabs admitted it paid an undisclosed amount of ransom
to the hackers to retrieve the stolen data, which indicates that
the attack might have been carried out using a ransomware style
malware with data exfiltration abilities.
“Retrieving the data by making a payment. We did this in
collaboration with experts familiar with cyber-attacks and
negotiations with cybercriminals,” the company said while
announcing several measures it took to protect its customers’
information.
labs for diagnostic, naturopathic, and genetic tests, reside in
British Columbia and Ontario, with relatively few customers in
other locations.
“In the case of lab test results, our investigations to date of
these systems indicate that there are 85,000 impacted customers
from 2016 or earlier located in Ontario; we will be working to
notify these customers directly,” the press release read.
information was from 2016 or earlier.”
LifeLabs said it immediately involved “world-class cybersecurity
experts” to isolate and secure the affected computer systems and
determine the scope of the cyber attack.
enforcement, privacy commissioners, and government partners to
investigate the breach incident.
While LifeLabs has taken several steps to fix the system issues
related to the cyber attack and strengthen its cyber defenses by
placing additional safeguards to protect your information, it is
also offering one free year of identity theft insurance.
“Any customer who is concerned about this incident can receive
one free year of protection that includes dark web monitoring and
identity theft insurance,” LifeLabs said.
Since the exposed data includes users’ account login
information, affected users are strongly advised to change their
passwords on the company’s website as well as on any other where
they have reused the same password.
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