UnitedHealth says Change Healthcare hacked by nation state, as pharmacy outages drag on

U.S. medical health insurance big UnitedHealth Group stated Thursday in a submitting with authorities regulators that its subsidiary Change Healthcare was compromised doubtless by government-backed hackers.

In a filing Thursday, UHG blamed the ongoing cybersecurity incident affecting Change Healthcare on suspected nation state hackers however stated it had no timeframe for when its techniques can be again on-line.

UHG didn’t attribute the cyberattack to a particular nation or authorities, or cite what proof it needed to help its declare.

An organization spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark on the time of writing.

Change Healthcare supplies affected person billing throughout the U.S. healthcare system. The corporate processes billions of healthcare transactions yearly and claims it handles round one-in-three U.S. affected person data, amounting to round 100 million Individuals.

The cyberattack started early Wednesday, according to the company’s incident tracker.

Change Healthcare has not but disclosed the precise nature of its cyberattack.

Pharmacies throughout the U.S. are reporting that they’re unable to meet prescriptions by means of sufferers’ insurance coverage as a result of ongoing outage at Change Healthcare, which handles a lot of the billing course of.

A number of individuals who work within the healthcare area and whose work is affected by the outage inform TechCrunch that they’re experiencing downtime due to the continuing cyberattack.

UHG stated in its submitting that it has “retained main safety specialists, is working with legislation enforcement and notified clients, purchasers and sure authorities businesses.”