The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Monday warned of rising online scam cases as hackers of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) may sell the stolen data to scammers.
According to Jeffrey Ian Dy, undersecretary for cybersecurity, connectivity, and upskilling, “millions” of PhilHealth users were affected by the Medusa ransomware.
Dy, however, said the number of affected members will decrease because of duplicated files.
“We have analyzed the files, actually we are almost 90 percent done. We have seen that a lot of those files have questionable extensions,” he added.
On October 6, the Complaints and Investigation Division of the National Privacy Commission (NPC) completed its initial analysis of 650 gigabytes (GB) worth of compressed files originating from the data dump claimed by the Medusa group.
Upon extraction, the NPC said these files revealed a staggering 734GB worth of data, including personal and sensitive personal information.
When asked if the hackers will release more data, DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said “I would not put it past them until they still have an opportunity because this stage they did not get a ransom from the government they will try to monetize the info by selling to scammers to use their data.”
The DICT further said national government agencies should have their own cybersecurity response teams amid increasing cyberattack cases.
Earlier, Medusa hackers were demanding $300,000 to return the stolen data from the PhilHealth database.
“There’s nothing for them to demand anymore, they have released the concern of the DICT. Our analysts are looking at the data and information they are posting allegedly full of data leaks. We found it loaded with malware,” Uy said.
“A warning to our countrymen that the information was used by cyber criminals to make them bait,” he added.
PhilHealth earlier issued an advisory once again urging the public to be vigilant and take preventive measures against fraudulent activities.