Unknown Hackers Steal 124,000 Patient Files from Texas Care Center

Home Care Providers of Texas (HCPT) has warned patients that hackers may have stolen personal and health information from its servers.

Home Care Providers of Texas is a Medicare certified agency licensed by the Lone Star State “to provide skilled medical care and rehabilitation treatment in the privacy of the patient’s home.”

On June 29, 2022, the healthcare provider learned a portion of its IT environment was hit by hackers. The attack “caused encryption of certain files stored on the network,” according to a notice to patients.

In a classic double extortion scheme, the ransomware operators not only encrypted files but also copied what HCPT called “a limited number of files” from its systems.

As required by law, the care center immediately notified police and started investigating the breach.

“After an extensive forensic investigation and comprehensive review of all the data impacted, on November 15, 2022, we discovered that certain personal and health information maintained on our systems was potentially accessed by an unauthorized party between June 15, 2022 and June 29, 2022,” the advisory reads.

Stolen patient data includes individual names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers, treatment or diagnosis data, and medication information.

HCPT is notifying affected patients and suggesting steps to take to protect their personal information.

The care center stops short of saying if they’ve cooperated with the attackers to stop the leak of data or restore their systems.

No hacking group has yet taken responsibility for the attack on HCPT.

A report to the Texas Attorney General indicates that 124,363 Texans were affected in this incident, according to DataBreaches.net.

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