Hackers requesting money for stolen documents

[b0n3z]

LINKY

I've been keeping an eye on this over the past day or so.

One of my soldiers asked me why they would do something like this, randomly, and I went into a roughly 30 minutes discussion about how selling the info on the "black market" would make money but they could possibly get more this way. Although, this in itself will be their downfall.

At least that's my opinion.

[noid]

Re: Hackers requesting money for stolen documents

Back when I was a consultant I used to ask my clients two questions when it came to their data:

How much is it worth to you?

How much would it be worth to your competition?

Its that second number thats the important one. If your data is worth 1 million dollars to you, but 10 million to your competition, then you're going to have to figure out how to pony up the difference.

[valkyrie]

Re: Hackers requesting money for stolen documents

Back when I was a consultant I used to ask my clients two questions when it came to their data:

How much is it worth to you?

How much would it be worth to your competition?

Its that second number thats the important one. If your data is worth 1 million dollars to you, but 10 million to your competition, then you're going to have to figure out how to pony up the difference.

Those are the only two valid and important questions to ask a client.

I even devised a rude quantification schema for mine to figure it out more nearly.

Thanks Noid.

Regards,

valkyrie
____________________________________________
sapere aude

[xor]

Re: Hackers requesting money for stolen documents

LINKY

I've been keeping an eye on this over the past day or so.

One of my soldiers asked me why they would do something like this, randomly, and I went into a roughly 30 minutes discussion about how selling the info on the "black market" would make money but they could possibly get more this way. Although, this in itself will be their downfall.

At least that's my opinion.

While what the hacker did was wrong, I also feel the site has some questionable legal standing on it's own with regard to privacy of medical records.

It's purpose is to track prescription fraud, people doctor shopping for narcotics, folks who steal a doctors prescriptrion pad and write their own prescriptions.

There are very few if any checks and balances that go into the prescription system. The site was probably poorly funded in order to keep it off peoples radar. For systems like this to work pharmacies as well as doctors a like must share information. Not just doctor to pharmacy, but different pharmacies, different companies all sharing medical information with or without your express written permission in most cases. All this to prevent the above mentioned crimes and from people abusing the system.

Most people could phone in a prescription to a pharmacy provided you know the doctors DEA number as well as their license number and request a schedule 3 drug. Schedule 2 will definitely generate a red flag however, at least over the phone.

Each state is also different, some require call backs(easily faked), or triplicate forms for schedule 2 drugs. A lot of doctors are going online these days to fill prescriptions. There is a free site funded by a grant from the government where doctors can go and register and then fill prescriptions online for free(not free drugs just the transaction of filling is free).

This also slides into the war on drugs deal which includes prescription drugs. But what most people don't realize is that if you are say diagnosed with some painful form of terminal cancer(bone cancer) and you exceed some marker in the system with the number of narcotics you are taking you could be labeled an addict and denied those drugs. Personally if I'm dieing and I want to go out whacked out of my head on Demerol and Morphine I should be allowed as much as I want. But that is not the case.

xor

[b0n3z]

Re: Hackers requesting money for stolen documents

here is the statement released about how the hack was accomplished.

Sadly, it's not surprising at all.