Tag Archive for: georgia

DOJ charges security exec for hacking a Georgia healthcare company in 2018

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A security company executive has been charged for hacking into (PDF) the Gwinnett Medical Center’s network on or around September 27th, 2018. According to the Department of Justice, Vikas Singla from Georgia conducted a cyberattack on the not-for-profit network of healthcare providers in part for commercial advantage and personal financial gain. Singla was the chief operating officer of a network security company in metro-Atlanta — the DOJ didn’t name the company, but the profile matches that of Securolytics — that served the healthcare industry. He (and his yet-to-be-named associates) allegedly disrupted GMC’s phone service, obtained information from a digitizing device and disrupted network printer service during the attack.

While the DOJ didn’t dive into the specifics of the case, it was reported back in 2018 that GMC was investigating a possible data breach that led to the leak of patient information online. The attackers also threatened GMC’s staff and shamed the provider on the internet. Now-deleted blog posts on Securolytics’ website written by Singla describe attacking targets in healthcare, presumably to fix problems with their security. How that activity is linked to the data breach reported in 2018, or the charges filed this week, is still unclear.

The executive was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 8th and was charged with 17 counts of intentional damage to a protected computer, with each charge carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He was also charged with one count of obtaining information by computer from a protected computer, which has a max sentence of five years in prison.

Special Agent in Charge Chris Hacker of the FBI’s Atlanta Field Office said:

“This cyberattack on a hospital not only could have had disastrous consequences, but patients’ personal information was also compromised. The FBI and our law enforcement partners are determined to hold accountable, those who allegedly put people’s health and safety at risk while driven by greed.”

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FBI finds 79,100 Georgia medical center patients’ data on unauthorized computer

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Jackie Drees –

Griffin, Ga.-based Family Medical Center, part of Gore Medical Management, recently began notifying patients that their personal information may have been exposed through a hacking incident in 2017.

Gore Medical Management reported the breach to HHS Feb. 8 as affecting 79,100 individuals. In a notice published on its website, the medical center said the FBI notified it of the data theft in November 2020 after finding the stolen files on a third-party computer that was not part of Family Medical Center’s practice.

Patient information exposed included names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. The stolen files did not contain healthcare or financial records, according to the notice.

The hacker did not access Family Medical Center’s medical records database to steal the patient data. The medical center said it discovered and eliminated the access point the hacker used several months after the breach.

The medical center is offering one year of free identity protection and credit-monitoring services to affected patients as a result of the incident.

More articles on cybersecurity:
CISA warns of vulnerabilities in file transfer services after ransomware attacks on Centene, Kroger
Email hack exposes 45,000 patients’ data at Covenant HealthCare
Pandemic drove uptick in cyberattacks: 3 report findings


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Georgia election official debunks Trump’s ‘ridiculous claims’

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  • Georgia Voting System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling fact-checked a wide range of President Donald Trump’s new and old baseless election and voter fraud claims on Monday. 
  • Sterling’s weekly news conference came after multiple news organizations published audio of a stunning hour-long call where Trump pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to reverse the election results.
  • Sterling said that he “screamed into his computer” and “screamed in his car” when he heard Trump repeating debunked conspiracies about ballots being tampered with at State Farm Arena.
  • “Again, this is all easily, provably, false. Yet, the president persists. And by doing so, undermines Georgians’ faith in the election system, especially Republican Georgians,” Sterling said. 
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

In a news conference Monday, Georgia Voting System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling tried to fact check as many of President Donald Trump’s election and voter fraud claims as possible.

Monday’s press conference was the latest in a series of news conferences that Sterling has dubbed “anti-disinformation Mondays” or “Groundhog Day Mondays” of refuting the same general falsehoods and misconceptions about the November election. 

Sterling, at times appearing exacerbated, emphasized that the state has conducted a thorough audit of its results and that voters should not “self-censor” by refusing to vote in Tuesday’s Senate runoff elections because of Trump’s mischaracterization of the November election as fraudulent.

 

The news conference came on the heels of a leaked phone call between the president and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where Trump urged him to “find” thousands of votes that would retroactively flip the Peach State’s results in his favor.

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won’t budge on Inauguration Day

Sterling was flanked on Monday by a large chart showing Trump’s accusations juxtaposed with facts on how Georgia conducts its elections.

“We see nothing in our investigations…

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Georgia: Trump calls Senate runoff elections ‘illegal and invalid’

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  • President Donald Trump tweeted that the Georgia Senate runoff elections are “both illegal and invalid.”
  • He cited a bipartisan legal agreement as being proof of unconstitutionality — a claim that courts have rejected.
  • Hours later, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”
  • Trump will attend a rally in Georgia on Monday for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

On Friday evening, President Donald Trump tweeted that the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs are “both illegal and invalid.”

Just hours later, Trump vowed to “rally” for both Republican candidates — Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — and told Georgians to “get ready to vote on Tuesday.”

In the initial three-part Twitter thread alleging fraud, Trump claimed that Tuesday’s vote would be illegitimate because of one of the state’s legal settlements.

Read more: Secret Service experts are speculating in group chats about how Trump might be hauled out of the White House if he won’t budge on Inauguration Day

“The Georgia Consent Decree is Unconstitutional & the State 2020 Presidential Election is therefore both illegal and invalid, and that would include the two current Senatorial Elections,” the president wrote.

 

The consent decree, a bipartisan agreement signed in March, established standards for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. Legal attempts to prove that this decree is unconstitutional have all failed.

Other legal challenges to overturn the election results, such as L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell’s attempt to decertify Georgia’s results, have also been thrown out.

Despite Trump inaccurately dismissing Tuesday’s two Senate runoffs as illegitimate, he still urged his followers to vote.

 

The elections will directly affect the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. If Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock win, the Democratic Party will control the legislative and executive branches, allowing Biden to accomplish his legislative goals more easily.

Trump…

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