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NEWS FROM THE LAB - Monday, December 10, 2012
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Australian Medical Records Encrypted, Held Ransom Posted by Sean @ 10:05 GMT

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a server belonging to a small medical business located in Australia's Gold Coast has been hacked, had its patient records encrypted, and held ransom for $4000.

Miami Family Medical Centre
Image source: Google

The Australian edition of SC Magazine reported on similar hacks earlier this year.

This strikes us as an interesting development as most of the ransomware we've seen during 2012 has been focused on locking out individuals from their desktops. (See the ransomware section of our H1 Threat Report.)

There have been numerous "hacktivist" driven breaches during 2012. (Including ones involving sensitive medical records.) It really is not much of a surprise, or it shouldn't be, that some criminals have developed ways to profit from the same sort of hacker activity. Is this the beginning of a trend which we'll see outside of Oz in 2013?