The Virginian-Pilot
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State officials are notifying more than a half-million Virginians that their Social Security numbers may have been contained in a prescription drug database that was targeted by a computer hacker April 30.
The hacker gained access to the Prescription Monitoring Program computer system, which is designed to deter prescription drug abuse, and demanded a $10 million ransom. The hacker has not been identified.
A criminal investigation has not yet determined what, if any, personal information was put at risk in the incident, said Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Virginia Department of Health Professions, on Wednesday.
Nevertheless, the state is mailing individual notifications to 530,000 people whose prescription records may have contained Social Security numbers, in order to alert them to the potential for identity theft, Ryals said.
In addition, 1,400 registered users of the database, mostly doctors and pharmacists, who may have provided Social Security numbers when they registered for the program are being notified.
The database contains records of more than 35 million prescriptions dispensed since 2006 for certain federally controlled drugs with a high potential for abuse, such as OxyContin, Vicodin and Xanax.
The records include patients' name, address and date of birth, the name and quantity of the drug prescribed, and identifying numbers for the doctor and pharmacist.
Each record also includes an optional field for an identifying patient number. All patients identified by a nine-digit number, which could be a Social Security number, are receiving the mailed notifications, said Kathy Siddall, a department spokeswoman.
The mailing advises patients to check their bank statements and credit reports for signs of identity theft and report any suspicious activity to their local police department.
The prescription database was shut down in the wake of the hacker attack.
Prescription records are now being entered into the system again, but users' access to the data won't be restored until enhanced security measures are put in place, Siddall said.
Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com
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I.D. Theft
So chalk up 1 more massive failure in the war on drug's .
we need to just admit that some people are going to use drugs no matter what we do.this should be a issue between a doctor and the patient .. law enforcment has no medical training they have no idea how to help a person with a substance abuse problem or how to determine if a person is a abuser or occasional recreational user of drugs.
We have spent well over a trillion $'s in the past 40 yrs on this nonsense and the ones who have suffered the most are the people who have legit needs for pain relief.
Some doctors are now scared to properly medicate and prescribe pain meds for those in agonizing pain people who work their whole life and now in the end stages of their illnesses are forced to needlessly suffer because of some antiquated idea that we should tell people in a allegedly free country what medication they can have even when A doctor say'S its needed.. Virginia's own Thomas Jefferson said [If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”] so if you think it will stop with medication
Oh, great!
My son is on a controlled substance and is too young to have a credit card. How much you wanna bet that by the time he is old enough, someone who has his name, birthdate, and address,plus poss SSN, will have already opened a credit file on him . . .?
Guess we need to get him identity theft protection, too.
fluent
I never said that BO started this database. But for your edification, he would like to have a database with every person in the USA and their full medical records accessible on line. Now if the state of Virginia can't maintain one database that supposedly has a very limited number of people and records why would it be anything except moronic to believe that BO and his pipedream wont be just as slack at protecting the private information of American citizens.
horrible idea to electronify health records
This illustrates what a horrible idea it is to electronify health records. Our government can't distinguish their own heads from their own feet - and we expect them to secure sensitive personal data? "The hacker gained access to the Prescription Monitoring Program computer system," ... how? No details are provided by the Virginian-Pilot, which clearly does not want to jeopardize its candidates or agenda positions. But I'm willing to bet this system was hacked through the Internet, which it never should have been plugged into! Anyone in government ever hear of a leased line? This is truly outrageous, it fully reveals the incompetence of government right up to the top, and nobody is going to do a thing about it. We'll go right on electronifying everything, making all of our data accessible to pimply-faced punk hackers.
SS Number
The article said, "State officials are notifying more than a half-million Virginians that their Social Security numbers may have been contained ...". Since we aren't familiar with the database (DB), it may be that not everyone who had prescriptions in the data base also had their SS number in the DB.
If they notified everyone in the DB without taking time to find whose SS numbers were and whose were not compromised, then their statement makes sense. Another way for it to make sense is if the data base consists of several files (which it almost certainly does)and they are not certain which files(s) were compromised.
Also consider that highly trained and motivated people are constantly trying to break in to these systems. The guardians may keep them out 10,000 times and then fail one time to anticipate the nature of an attack and the data is compromised.
Despite the convenience of having data readily available to those who really need it, there is great risk in having such data on computers connected to the internet.
Quote from earlier article on this
"Less credible, however, was a threat to disseminate personal data from the records such as Social Security and driver’s license numbers. That kind of information is not included in the database, nor is information about patients’ medical history.
The records contain the recipient’s name, address and date of birth, the name and quantity of the drug prescribed, the date, and identifying numbers for the prescriber and dispenser."
I thought SSN's and DLN's were not included in the database. So much for the accuracy of the first report.
Tim Kaine is 100% to blame.
Tim Kaine is 100% to blame. He has done nothing for Virginia. This is another example.
not quite like this
This is the third time the paper has run a story on the hacking of the database. Each of the first two instances the state talkingmouths and the VP both assured that there was no personal information at risk. So now that they finally have to admit the truth the VP sticks this story in a drop down list before moving it to the front page. So yes I would say buried. Buried so they can continue to support the collection and control of our personal medical information by the BO administration. I'm sure it will be just as safe as the information in this database and that the federal government will be a forthcoming when there is a problem with their system.
Good Job
And now the guy who was Virginia's CTO is working in Washington. Get ready, folks.
Is anyone really surprised
a) that this happened and now all these records are compromised, b)that the VP buried this article because it is a lousy omen of things to come, c) that our medical records will be just as safe in governments eletronic hands.