UnitedHealth, last week issued a statement that it was beginning to clear a medical claim backlog of more than $14 billion as its services gets restored back online following a cyberattack, which caused wide-ranging disruption starting in late February.
State Department of the U.S on Wednesday offered up to $10 million for information on the “Blackcat” ransomware gang responsible for the UnitedHealth group hit and snarled insurance payments across America.
The states’ department in a public statement announcing the reward offer said, “The ALPHV Blackcat ransomware-as-a-service group compromised computer networks of critical infrastructure sectors in the United States and worldwide.”
The UnitedHealth’s tech unit, Change Healthcare, is critical in processing payments from insurance companies to practitioners, and the outage caused by the cyberattack has in some cases left patients and doctors out of pocket. The toll on the community health centers that serve more than 30 million poor and uninsured patients has been very harsh.
The Hackers earlier this month noted that UnitedHealth paid up to $20m ransom in a bid to recover its systems, but whether Blackcat honored its end of the bargain has not been made public.
Shortly after the hack, the group put a bogus press release on its website falsely claiming it had been seized by law enforcement, giving the impression that they had shut down operations.