RansomHub says it published Florida health department data
The hacking group RansomHub this week claimed it exfiltrated and published 100 gigabytes of sensitive data from the Florida Department of Health because the department refused to meet its ransom demands.
According to a July 1 post on X by HackManac, a company that tracks cyberattacks, RansomHub threatened to release the stolen health department data in a post on the dark web unless the state paid an undisclosed amount of money by Friday.
Florida, in compliance with guidelines from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has a policy of not paying ransomware demands, as payment does not guarantee an organization will regain access to its data or be able to resume normal operations.
In response to the missed deadline, RansomHub published a link to the stolen data on its account with the message: “The Florida Department of Health is responsible for protecting the public health and safety of the residents and visitors to the state of Florida. It is a cabinet-level agency of the state government, headed by a state surgeon general who reports to the governor. The department has its headquarters in Tallahassee.”
The Florida Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment.
“There’s no particular reason to doubt that RansomHub does have as least some of the data it claims to have,” Brett Callow, threat analyst at the software company Emsisoft, told StateScoop by email. “The Department has acknowledged that it had a cybersecurity incident and RansomHub – a known and prolific bad actor – has claimed responsibility for that incident.”
The ransomware attack and subsequent data leak was the latest in a strong of incidents to hit government agencies in recent months. According to Emsisoft, 2,207 U.S. hospitals, schools and governments were affected by ransomware attacks last year.
The Florida Department of Health, like most public health organizations, contains sensitive information on state residents, including medical records, Social Security numbers and health insurance information. The department is responsible for the state’s 67 county health departments and licenses doctors, nurses and several other health-related professions.
“The US healthcare sector continue to be heavily targeted by for-profit cybercriminals, with up to 200 hospitals having been directly impacted by ransomware attacks, and scores more indirectly impacted by the attack on Change Healthcare,” Callow wrote. “It’s a problem that put people’s personal information at risk and, worse, their lives at risk.”
In February, a new state budget for the 2025 fiscal year, obtained by StateScoop, proposed reverting $40 million, part of Florida’s Local Government Cybersecurity Grant, back into the state’s general fund.
Cyberattacks against state and local governments are prevalent in Florida, including a ransomware attack by the hacker group Black Cat on the state’s court system last October and a phishing attack that scammed Fort Lauderdale for $1.2 million in September.
Meanwhile, cyberattacks have been hitting other state agencies. On Wednesday, the New Mexico public defender’s office was also hit with a ransomware attack that compromised its data. And that same day, the Alabama Department of Education announced it had been the target of a cyberattack last month, in which hackers failed to fully access or lock its systems, but that some data was compromised.
