Singapore personal data hack hits 1.5m

M Humayun Kabir: Hackers have stolen personal data of some 1.5 million people, or about a quarter of the population of Singapore, officials say.
A government statement yesterday said the cyber criminals broke into the government health database in a “deliberate, targeted and well-planned” attack, reports BBC.
Data taken include names and addresses but not medical records, other than medicines dispensed in some cases.
“Information on the outpatient dispensed medicines of about 160,000 of these patients” was taken, the statement says.
Those targeted visited clinics between 1 May 2015 and 4 July of this year.
It appears that a computer belonging to SingHealth, one of the state’s two major government healthcare groups, was infected with malware through which the hackers gained access to the database. They struck sometime between 27 June and 4 July, according to the government. “The records were not tampered with, ie no records were amended or deleted. No other patient records, such as diagnosis, test results or doctors’ notes, were breached. We have not found evidence of a similar breach in the other public healthcare IT systems.”