Finland’s interior minister summoned key Cabinet members into an emergency meeting Sunday after hundreds — and possibly thousands — of patient records at a private Finnish psychotherapy center were accessed by a hacker or hackers now demanding ransoms.
Finnish Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo tweeted that authorities would “provide speedy crisis help to victims” of the security breach at the Vastaamo psychotherapy center, an incident she called “shocking and very serious.”
Vastaamo, which has branches throughout the Nordic country of 5.5 million and operates as a sub-contractor for Finland’s public health system, said its client register with intimate patient information was likely stolen during two attacks that started almost two years ago.
The first incursion probably took place in November 2018 and “it is likely that our (data) systems were penetrated also between the end of November 2018 and March 2019,” Vastaamo said in a statement late Saturday.
The center said the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators had published at least 300 patient records containing names and contact information using the anonymous Tor communication software. “The blackmailer has started to approach victims of the security breach directly with extortion letters,” it said.
The National Bureau of Investigation said Sunday up to “tens of thousands” of Vastaamo clients may have had their personal data compromised. Police were looking for the possible culprits both in Finland and abroad.
It was not immediately clear if the stolen information included diagnoses, notes from therapy sessions or other potentially damaging information. Also, it wasn’t clear why the information was surfacing only now.
“What makes this case exceptional is the contents of the stolen material,” Marko Leponen, the National Bureau of Investigation’s chief investigator assigned to the case, told reporters.
Vastaamo urged clients who receive demands to pay money in exch ..
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