Hospital Confirms Hacker Stole 5,000 Patient Files

Computerworld - A major university hospital in Seattle last week confirmed that a hacker penetrated its computer network this past summer and made off with files containing information on approximately 5,000 patients.
Officials at the University of Washington Medical Center said the hacker, who calls himself "Kane," stole users' passwords and copied thousands of files while he had access to the hospital's systems. The hacker slipped into the network through an exposed Linux server in the hospital's pathology department, said medical center CIO Tom Martin.
The medical center suspected at the time that its network had been infiltrated and took steps to cut off the hacker's access, Martin said. But, he added, the hospital was unaware that the files had been pilfered until Kane provided information about the intrusion to SecurityFocus.com, a San Mateo, Calif.-based Web site that focuses on security issues.
Outlaw or Whistle-blower?
Kane, who told SecurityFocus that he lives in the Netherlands, shared some of the copied files with the security Web site to verify that he had accessed the sensitive data. SecurityFocus.com staffer Kevin Poulsen said Kane views himself as an ethical hacker and indicated that he simply wanted to expose the vulnerability of the hospital's network. "He portrays himself as more of a whistle-blower than as an outlaw," Poulsen said.
But after being informed of the file-copying, officials at the medical center reported the hacking incident to the FBI for investigation, Martin said. The hospital also beefed up its firewalls in an effort to better protect its network, and it began notifying all of the patients whose personal information was in the files that Kane copied.
In a statement, the hospital said the copied information wasn't directly related to the delivery of care to its patients. Rather, the information was stored in administrative databases and was used for patient tracking and following up on research studies.
"There is no evidence that anyone has breached our main electronic medical records system," said the hospital in a statement. "We assure patients and the public that this system remains fully protected by the highest levels of security possible."
Martin said Kane used sniffer software to steal the electronic identifications of a number of hospital employees from the exposed server and then used those credentials to access files related to patients in the medical center's cardiology and rehabilitation departments.
Martin said the hospital will be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a set of privacy and security guidelines that the federal government is close to finalizing.
WesRishel, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn., described Kane's intrusion as "a classic penetration of a secondary system" that was running a personal application with collected data, rather than an attack on the hospital's main database server.
"Academic medical centers are prone to this, as part of the spirit of academic freedom that creates pressure for open access," Rishel said. The only major impact from the hacking incident might be to get policy-makers in Washington to push the HIPAA through as quickly as possible, he added.

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