6 ms·
UnitedHealth Group has paid more than $2B to providers following cyberattack
- gravescale 3y agoFunny how that money wouldn't have been there when someone suggested doing it right in the first place. Of course the MBAs see this as a win as their names aren't on anything except the profits at the time. Parasites.
- kurthr 3y agoThis (IT Integrity Charge) will become a line item on your medical bill. All the other providers will follow, prices go up, insurance companies make more money, and "shareholders" see high returns!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- natoliniak 3y ago> We continue to call on Congress and the Administration to take additional actions now to support providers ah yeah, the old socializing losses and privatizing profits.
- dsr_ 3y agoAt what point will cybersecurity firms arrange deals with cybercriminal organizations to keep the money flowing? * protection for our clients * drum up business for the market as a whole * make competitors look bad -- especially if they get attacked directly After all, breaking a window makes money for the glaziers.
- qaq 3y agocybercriminal organizations pull way more $ than cybersecurity firms do
- null0ranje 3y agoMaybe when supply outstrips demand? It looks like there is more than enough business for the foreseeable future that there is no need to restore to protection rackets.
- whimsicalism 3y agothis has already happened in a few notable cases with ddos protection providers, it’s basically digital rico
- throwup238 3y agoCloudflare? They provide DDoS protection to DDoS providers that would otherwise have taken each other down, so those providers can find clients for their services which further necessitates Cloudflare’s main product.
- lebean 3y agoWow they must be making millions on this lucrative market, defending DDoS providers from each other. An infinite money glitch!
- Aerbil313 3y ago> provide protection to DDoS providers that would otherwise have taken each other down Given many DDOSs are originated by botnets, is this possible?
- throwup238 3y agoDDoS providers have websites marketing their services which Cloudflare allows (for free!) in the name of not policing speech. Before Cloudflare, they didn't exist because competitors would always take each other down. Anyone who wanted to hire them had to go trawling the darkweb/freenet/random hacker forums.
- htrp 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/250/ https://xkcd.com/250/ also I think there was a thing on krebs where a reputation defender company was also operating one of those mugshot search sites https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/ceo-of-data-privacy-company-onerep-com-founded-dozens-of-people-search-firms/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/ceo-of-data-privacy-comp...
- costco 3y agoUCEPROTECT has mastered the email blacklisting protection racket. Randomly list IP space on blacklist, force payment for removal, ???, profit.
- ixaxaar 3y agoGood. Also, don't hire good devs, only hire the cheap ones in India. Money saved can be paid to these providers. That way, the money stays in the us. A 10k IQ move that no one will understand. /s ov course
- qaq 3y agoIt's to a degree orthogonal to devs your hire as well resourced APT will be able to penetrate any org regardless of quality of developers an org hires.
- peteradio 3y agoInevitably the cause of the breach will be something like an open firewall.
- bluGill 3y ago70% of security vulnerabilities in code are memory safety issues. However the vast majority of in then wild attacks were not against security vulnerabilities but against people. No technology can protect you from someone giving out the secret keys to the attacker.
- waihtis 3y agojust false, if you look at most of the ransomware cases for example. This whole fixation of "human layer security" has done more harm to cybersecurity than many actually malicious things. Wasting your money and resources on training Karen from HR to spot 20% more phishing emails yields exactly the results you'd think it does. I hope we can get out of that nonsense and tackle cyber issues with actual technological investments as it should and can be done.
- loeg 3y agoThe technology solution here is not allowing Karen from HR to have a password at all and instead using something like Yubikey + FIDO, which can't be phished.
- peteradio 3y ago> The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it has launched an investigation into the company due to the “unprecedented magnitude of the cyberattack.” Let the coverup begin, well actually they probably started wiping days after the attack.
- briffle 3y agoThe 2 old datacenteers are still sitting there with Mandiant doing a full investigation since the attack started. They have been migrating all their services for that business they bought to the cloud, and have already started turning up several services.
- advisedwang 3y agoWould there be less coverup if they didn't investigate?
- eli 3y agoTo be clear: they haven't "lost" any money here. They probably genuinely owe providers $2B. They just don't know exactly how much until the billing systems are back online, at which point they'll reconcile.
- hammock 3y agoThoughts and prayers to their accounting department
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- antisthenes 3y agoThoughts and prayers to the taxpayers, to whom all the costs will be passed down anyway.
- lebean 3y agoHow??
- jollofricepeas 3y agoYes. These are the payments owed by plans. UnitedHealth is also advancing money to some providers as well. See: https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/ns/changehealthcare.html https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/ns/changehealthcare.html
- pwizzler 3y agoA drop in the bucket compared to how much they normally transact, but it sounds like good PR.
- cellis 3y agoWow aol is still a thing? Just a news site? Brings me back…
- ethbr1 3y agoNoticed this a few years ago too. Expect there was too much traffic to the domain for the current owner to abandon. The Wayback machine on it, through the decades, is fascinating if you're curious.
- autoexec 3y agoAOL was the Google of its day. It was the internet for most people. Even the strongest giants can fall. It gives me hope for a future where someone asks "Wow Google is still a thing?"
- dragonwriter 3y ago> It was the internet for most people. It wasn't, though. It was the largest, but never majority (except that I think it peaked with an absolute majority of CDs pressed by AOL CDs, which was an achievement, I guess.)
- FredPret 3y agoThe healthcare market in the US is crazy. UnitedHealth has revenues of $90b per quarter, up from $20B 15 years ago: https://valustox.com/UNH https://valustox.com/UNH They only make a 6% margin, but still. That's a ton of cash.
- ericmcer 3y agoThe health insurance industry makes more money than the oil industry. It isn't a coincidence that most of our taxes go to healthcare and the top grossing industries are all built around it.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoOil business earns far more profit at far higher profit margins. Exxon alone earns more profit than all managed care organizations (health insurance companies) some years. Revenue that is 95% paid to vendors and employees is not an interesting statistic, on a company level.
- takinola 3y agoThe US has a population of 300 million people. This works out to just $300 per person per quarter (or $1,200 annually). Given almost 20% of the population is over 65 (old people really put up the healthcare cost numbers) and the sophistication of our healthcare system (we have the tech to keep you alive or prolong your life despite pretty hairy stuff happening to you), it is not a very surprising number. The real question is how to afford it all.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoActual release from Monday: https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/newsroom/2024/2024-03-18-uhg-cyberattack-status-update.html https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/newsroom/2024/2024-03-18-u... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39750378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39750378)
- BillSaysThis 3y agoFrom the press release, this paragraph is making me hit the exploding head emoji many times: "To assist care providers whose finances have been disrupted by the cyberattack, the company has advanced more than $2 billion thus far through multiple initiatives. The company recognizes the high level of fragmentation of the U.S. health system can result in uneven experiences, therefore it continues to enhance and expand funding support to make it easier for care providers to access funding help at no cost. To further assist care providers, the company also suspended prior authorizations for most outpatient services and utilization review of inpatient admissions for Medicare Advantage plans."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Wally232 3y ago[dead]
- Wally232 3y ago[dead]