Ransomware Attack Hits Health Firm LabCorp

20.7.18 securityweek Ransomware

Burlington, North Carolina-based LabCorp took some of its systems offline last weekend after discovering that some had been infected by ransomware.

LabCorp, a company that provides “diagnostic, drug development and technology-enabled solutions for more than 115 million patient encounters per year,” serves hundreds of thousands of customers nationwide and processes tests on more than 2.5 million patient specimens per week.

With revenues that topped $10 billion last year, the health company operates a network of more than 1,900 patient service centers (PSCs) nationally and employs about 60,000 people.

In an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, the company revealed that, over the weekend of July 14, it detected suspicious activity on its network and decided to take some systems offline to contain the activity.

“The activity was subsequently determined to be a new variant of ransomware,” the health firm said, responding to a SecurityWeek inquiry on the attack.

“LabCorp promptly took certain systems offline as part of its comprehensive response to contain and remove the ransomware from its system. This has temporarily affected some test processing and customer access to test results,” the company said.

As of Monday, testing operations had been already resumed and the firm was working on bringing additional systems and functions online.

“Work has been ongoing to restore full system functionality as quickly as possible, testing operations have substantially resumed, and we are working to restore additional systems and functions over the next several days,” the company told SecurityWeek.

The ransomware, LabCorp says, only impacted its Diagnostics systems but did not affect Covance Drug Development systems. The health firm also revealed it has “engaged outside security experts and is working with authorities, including law enforcement.”

For the time being, the “investigation has found no evidence of theft or misuse of data,” the company said.