LifeLabs Suffers a Hack, Pays to Get Data Back

Hacking attacks are not only disruptive for the targeted companies and individuals, but also very threatening in regards to its victims’ privacy. This is why Canada’s largest provider of laboratory diagnostics and testing services, LifeLabs, admitted recently that it paid hackers who recently stole data from it.

LifeLabs pays hackers to recover data of 15 million customers https://t.co/IUsavM12lR

— ZDNET (@ZDNET) December 18, 2019

The breach supposedly took place in early November, according to the company’s recent press release. They also admitted to paying the hackers in collaboration with experts and professional negotiators. For now, the company did not reveal how much it had paid for the data. As mentioned, the breach happened over a month ago, on November 1st. This was confirmed by the firm, but also by official documents filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. During the attack, hackers managed to breach LifeLabs’ defenses, and extract customer data. After that, they demanded payment in return for the stolen information. The breach affected more than 15 million of the LifeLabs’ customers, and hackers stole data such as customer names, emails, home addresses, health card numbers, usernames, and passwords. They also stole medical test results belonging to around 85,000 individuals. The stolen data supposedly also dates back to 2016, and in some cases, even earlier than that. However, the investigation is currently still on-going, and LifeLabs is collaborating with the country’s law enforcement to study the hack. Fortunately, the experts already managed to identify the entry point that hackers used, and are working on fixing it. The company’s CEO, Charles Brown, noted that the affected customers should not worry, as cybersecurity firms have said that the risk to the firm’s customers is low. For now, hackers have not dumped any of the stolen information anywhere online, which includes the dark web.