Hackers steal dead people's medical records and sell them on the dark web

Medical records of deceased patients are appearing on illicit market places on the dark web, cyber security researchers have discovered. Cyber criminals are advertising huge caches of personal data of up to 140 million patients, with their value exceeding that of stolen credit card details. The morbid trend follows an increasing amount of incidents of medical data breaches, as reported by Oren Koriat, an analyst at the security firm Cynerio. "Cynerio is still seeing continued growth in the number of incidents of patient medical record breaches from hacking and unauthorised access to healthcare systems," Mr Koriat wrote. "Recently, Cynerio has detected an interesting new wrinkle in the sale of stolen medical data on the dark web. Our research team found a post from a vendor on the dark web offering the medical records of the deceased."