After hack, Canadian LifeLabs paid ransom for 15M+ customers' health data

After LifeLabs was hit by a a cyber attack in November, the Canada-based medical lab paid a ransom to recover stolen data belonging to more than 15 million of its customers. That stolen data included usernames, password, and some 80,000 or more test results.

"We did this [paying off the hackers] in collaboration with experts familiar with cyber-attacks and negotiations with cyber criminals," the company today said in a press release.

"I want to emphasize that at this time, our cyber security firms have advised that the risk to our customers in connection with this cyber-attack is low and that they have not seen any public disclosure of customer data as part of their investigations, including monitoring of the dark web and other online locations," said Charles Brown, LifeLabs President and CEO.

Catalin Cimpanu has more in a report for ZDNet.

There's more information for impacted users of LifeLabs in a security notice on the LifeLabs website.

LifeLabs pays hackers to recover data of 15 million customers [www.zdnet.com]

We recently identified a cyber-attack that involved unauthorized access to our computer systems. We are sorry that this incident happened. The data has been retrieved, and a law enforcement investigation is underway. For more info, visit https://t.co/gUYdHeR0Kh.

- LifeLabs (@LifeLabs) December 17, 2019

40% of Canada was breached in October -
I totally missed this one amid all of those other data breaches that happen every day.

Compromised information may include:
- Name
- Address
- Username/password
- DoB
- Health card number
- Lab test results https://t.co/dk9P67MHIX

- a1/41/4a(C)aUIaa1/4afa"ai3/4. * i ii3/4 (@bp256r1) December 18, 2019

For my fellow Canadians trying to get information on the @lifelabs breach, their website is DOS'd, but the notice site is still up. Go to https://t.co/7LwQaYbdh3

- Chester Wisniewski (@chetwisniewski) December 17, 2019

This LifeLabs breach is a bit different. The Canadian lab company admitted it paid the hackers to keep the stolen data secure https://t.co/rQ8GUqRSVN

- Michael Kan (@Michael_Kan) December 17, 2019

NEW: LifeLabs pays hackers to recover data of 15 million customers

-Hack took place last month
-Hacker(s) breached LifeLabs, stole customer data, and demanded a ransom
-Company didn't say how much it paid
-LifeLabs is Canada's biggest medical testing labhttps://t.co/iLO18rbCV8 pic.twitter.com/l1jZdrycG4

- Catalin Cimpanu (@campuscodi) December 17, 2019