Tag Archive for: united

United Hack Exposes The Problem With Health Care Monopolies

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In a bid to win reelection, the Biden administration keeps trying to sell the country on all the supposed benefits of Obamacare. Before continuing their sales campaign, they might want to check in with the doctors’ offices struggling to make payroll.

For over a month, the multitrillion-dollar health care sector has had to respond to a hack on a payment processor owned by UnitedHealthGroup, the nation’s largest insurer. Axios reported that hospitals, doctors, medical equipment suppliers, and pharmacies are collectively losing as much as $1 billion a day. The chaos is not only caused in no small part by the industry consolidation sparked by Obamacare, but it may make the problem even worse.

Too Big to Fail Redux?

Ignore for a moment the fact that Change Health Care, the UnitedHealth affiliate whose payment processing operations were attacked, reportedly paid $22 million to the ransomware group behind the hack — which will of course only encourage future efforts to target health care entities in cyberspace. The real issue comes via the size and breadth of the network being hacked.

Consider that Change processes 15 billion medical claims per year — the most by any organization in the country. In raw terms, that amounts to more than 41 million medical claims per day. When a company is processing what amounts to a medical claim for more than 1 in 10 Americans each and every day, that is bound to extend its reach far and wide in the health care system.

And so it has proved. Doctors and hospitals are struggling to manage cash flow without regular payments from insurers, as the system for processing payments remains clogged. Patients and pharmacists alike are struggling; pharmacists cannot process a patient’s insurance to determine the proper co-payment or co-insurance, and some patients are having to pay large sums out of pocket (that is, if they can afford to do so) and hope their insurance reimburses them eventually.

Encouraging More Consolidation

How did we get to this point? Why was the nation’s largest health insurer able to buy such a critically important payment processor? Good question.

For years, Obamacare has encouraged hospitals,…

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Maltese suspected hacker to be extradited to United States for computer malware crimes

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A Maltese man is waiting to be extradited to the United States after an operation by the Maltese police assisting the FBI in investigations led to his arrest.

Daniel Joe Meli, who is 27 years old is believed to have worked with people who are not Maltese in connection with the sale of illegal malware on the dark web. The accused, who is from Żabbar, was also said to have been involved in mentoring services on a hack forum, an internet forum for hacker culture and computer security.

The malware, a remote access trojan or RAT, is used by criminals to gain access to computers and servers and control their operation. The police said there were several victims in the United States who had fallen prey to this RAT, with no reported victims in Malta so far.

Meli’s social media profiles suggests that he used to work with Air Malta as a check-in agent, and that he now works with Aviaserve.

The investigations in Malta, overseen by the police cybercrime unit, were initiated following a request for assistance from the United States, which indicated that the prime suspect in the sale of this RAT is Maltese.

Investigations revealed the identification of the Maltese suspect and his association with other criminals who are not Maltese and do not reside in Malta.

The suspect was arrested at his workplace in Gudja on 7 February, and during searches conducted at various locations related to the suspect, numerous items linked to this investigation were seized.

The 27-year-old man appeared in court on Thursday afternoon before Magistrate Dr. Giannella Camilleri Busuttil LL.D, to begin extradition proceedings to the United States, where he will face charges before the American court.

He has consented to extradition and is being held in custody at the Correctional Facility in Kordin.

In connection with this investigation, a Nigerian accomplice, residing in Nigeria, was also arrested.

Operations in various countries related to the same illegal malware trade on the dark web were being coordinated by Europol, involving several other states, including the Australian Federal Police, the Canadian Police, Croatian Police, Finnish Police, Dutch Police, Romanian Police, German Police, and Nigerian…

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The Thanksgiving Cyber Siege: Rising Ransomware Attacks Across the United States

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3 Steps to Cyber Resilience

The 2023 Thanksgiving holiday, typically a time of celebration, was marred by ransomware breaches that had a significant impact on many large organizations throughout the United States. Read on to discover the reasons behind this alarming trend and why tighter cybersecurity measures are needed.

Ransomware attacks are essentially encryption-based data extortion where threat actors block access to your data until a ransom is paid, after which a decryption key is given to retrieve the data. According to a ransomware trend report, businesses and organizations in the United States remain the most lucrative targets for these threat actors, accounting for 43% of all global attacks.

November 2023 ransomware events in the United States included:

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SOURCE Konica Minolta

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Joint Statement on the Strategic Third Neighbor Partnership between the United States of America and Mongolia

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August 2, 2023

Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai to Washington, D.C., on August 2nd to celebrate the strategic Third Neighbor partnership between the United States and Mongolia. The two sides acknowledged the advancement of U.S.-Mongolia relations since the 2019 declaration of the two countries’ Strategic Partnership, which has provided a firm foundation to promote and strengthen bilateral relations. Ties between our two countries are at their strongest point yet and have developed on the basis of shared principles, respect for good governance, sovereignty, the rule of law, and human rights, as well as Mongolia’s Third Neighbor policy. 

The United States applauded Mongolia’s efforts to expand relations in the region and around the world, thus contributing to international stability. In this context, our two countries shared respective views on ensuring a prosperous, peaceful, and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. Together, the United States and Mongolia are expanding our strategic partnership with a focus on building economic resilience, promoting democratic principles and institutions, and strengthening our security cooperation. As strategic Third Neighbors, we will sustain our close partnership and forge ties between our citizens to ensure their continued prosperity and security. 

Deepening Economic Cooperation

The United States and Mongolia are partnering on joint responses to the 21st century’s most difficult economic challenges, exploring opportunities to increase trade and investment through bilateral cooperation and regional trade mechanisms. Our countries share a desire to deepen the bilateral economic relationship in areas of mutual interest and to pursue opportunities for cooperation in the mineral resources sector, clean energy, food security, and the digital economy through existing and new mechanisms, including for capacity building and trade promotion. 

Mongolia introduced the priorities of Mongolia’s New Recovery policy and related project implementation through public-private partnerships and Mongolia’s Vision-2050 long-term development policy. Both Governments…

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