The FBI is warning people that hackers are stealing healthcare payments by sending them to bank accounts they control.
The Bureau compelled to issue a warning after more than $4.6 million was tTaken in three different cases in which thieves pretended to be a support centre staff in order to send phishing emails or contact individuals working at payment processors and financial agencies.
The attackers would send phishing emails and call the victims on the phone to try to get them to give them their login information for healthcare-related websites, portals, and other online services.
After that, they would access people’s accounts and modify payment details. So, when the payment is processed, the money goes to the wrong account.
Major Occurrences in stealing healthcare payments
In addition to phishing, threat actors change the settings on the target’s Microsoft Exchange server and create their own rules to keep track of emails coming into and going out of the target’s inbox.
In one of the three attacks, the attackers replaced a hospital’s direct deposit banking information with their own using credentials from a “large healthcare organisation.”
$3.1 million total lost. In another incident, robbers got off with over $700,000, and in a third, a perpetrator modified the Automated Clearing House (ACH) instructions while posing as an employee and stole $840,000.
Healthcare organisations and payment processors should first educate their staff about the risks of phishing and ensure that they have strong, difficult-to-crack passwords that they do not share with friends or family or leave lying around on a slip of paper on their desks in order to protect themselves from such attacks.
They should also keep an eye out for changes to the email server that was not expective but seem reasonable.
The FBI decided that they should be suspicious of any employee who asks to change their MFA password or phone number in a short amount of time to check on stealing healthcare payments data.
