Abortions exposed among Australian health insurer customers

By ROD McGUIRK
Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Extortionists have dumped stolen client records relating to pregnancy terminations on the dark web in their latest effort to pressure Australia’s largest health insurer to pay a ransom. The cybercriminals began dumping customer records on Wednesday including treatments for HIV and drug addiction after Medibank this week ruled out paying a ransom for the return of the hacked data. The criminals on Thursday posted that they had demanded $9.7 million. That is $1 for the records of each of the 9.7 million current and former Medibank customers that were stolen. Most concerning was the theft of health claims for almost 500,000 customers that include diagnoses and treatments. Medibank CEO David Koczkar condemned the release of Thursday’s tranche of data as “disgraceful.”