The Patriot Post® · Healthcare.gov Hacked

Healthcare.gov was hacked in July, an attack that left consumers’ data untouched but the website’s trustworthiness (snicker, snort) damaged. A hacker, most likely trolling the web for a specific type of web server, stumbled onto one for Healthcare.gov. Whoever the hacker was, they might not have known they were breaking into the hilarious bag of fail of a website when they placed malware on the site to attack other sites with denial-of-service attacks. “There was a door left open,” an official at the Department of Homeland Security told The Wall Street Journal. Had the hacker been interested in stealing medical information and Social Security numbers of the 5.4 million people who have used the website, he or she was already over the threshold. Medical identification theft is particularly pernicious, according to the World Privacy Forum, which provides information about how to combat the crime. And this hack was not identified until August – after the malware sat on the website for about a month. More…