Quest Diagnostics Hacked: Patient Records Accessed

Medical testing firm Quest Diagnostics has reported an incident of unauthorized access to its computer systems, which occurred on Wednesday. The company disclosed in an SEC filing on Thursday that it believes patient records were accessed by an unauthorized party.

The intrusion affected the Quanum Lab Services Manager, a system utilized by clients for placing orders and reviewing test results. Quest Diagnostics is cooperating with law enforcement in the ongoing investigation into the cyberattack.

While the exact scope of the breach is still under investigation, the company has stated that the incident has not significantly impacted its business operations or its capacity to serve patients. It remains uncertain if this breach is connected to the recently discovered critical vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language, which have led to millions of hacking attempts globally.

These PHP flaws, first warned about earlier in the week, allow hackers to gain full control of vulnerable servers. Patches were released, prompting a global rush to secure systems, with some critical websites temporarily taken offline. The widespread publicity of the PHP vulnerabilities before patches were available gave attackers a significant head start.

This incident at Quest Diagnostics is one of several high-profile attacks targeting the healthcare sector recently. The motivations for such attacks vary, ranging from financial gain to state-sponsored actions. For instance, U.S. medical equipment company Stryker experienced a global outage in March, with an Iran-linked hacking group claiming responsibility in retaliation for specific U.S. military actions.