The Hunters International ransomware gang claimed to be behind a cyberattack on the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Fred Hutch) that resulted in patients receiving personalized extortion threats.
Fred Hutch is a Seattle-based cancer research and patient care and treatment center operating a network of more than ten clinical sites in the region.
At the start of the month, the hospital disclosed a cybersecurity incident that occurred on November 19, 2023, involving unauthorized access to its networks.
The health organization quarantined the impacted servers, took its clinical network offline to prevent the spread of the threat, and notified the federal law enforcement authorities of the attack.
The investigation conducted with the help of a leading forensic expert has not produced evidence that the attackers stole patient data, according to the
notice on Fred Hutch's website. However, investigations on that front haven't been completed yet.
Today, the ransomware group Hunters International has added Fred Hutchinson to their extortion portal on the dark web, threatening the healthcare organization with leaking 533.1GB of data allegedly stolen from its networks.
The threat actors have only published thumbnails of select documents they claim to have exfiltrated from Fred Hutch's networks, so the blackmail is still underway.
