Cyberattack on Polish medical software provider exposes patient data
Hackers stole personal data from a Polish healthcare software provider in the latest cyberattack to hit the country’s medical sector in recent months.
Qbusoft, which develops the Medyc medical records and practice management platform, was breached after an attacker exploited an SQL injection vulnerability in August, according to a notification issued last week by one of the healthcare providers affected by the incident.
SQL injection is a security flaw that allows hackers to trick a website into giving them access to information stored in its database.
Medyc said Friday the attackers obtained names, national identification numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The company said it had not confirmed the theft of medical records, but an affected healthcare provider said it was informed that Qbusoft had found evidence the attackers executed scripts targeting database tables containing medical information, making it “highly likely” that they also obtained some medical records.
The Addiction and Psychiatric Treatment Center in the central city of Inowrocław said patients at its day treatment unit were affected and that potentially compromised medical information included hospital treatment records and discharge summaries.
According to the center, an unauthorized person exploited an SQL injection vulnerability in Medyc’s application interface in late August and transferred an encrypted archive of a database outside Qbusoft’s systems. The intrusion was detected overnight on September 9.
