The US FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have released a joint advisory warning of a social engineering campaign that’s targeting the healthcare industry.
“Threat actors are using phishing schemes to steal login credentials for initial access and the diversion of automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments to US controlled bank accounts,” the advisory states.
“Healthcare organizations are attractive targets for threat actors due to their size, technological dependence, access to personal health information, and unique impacts from patient care disruptions.”
The threat actors used a variety of social engineering attacks to compromise accounts, including manipulating help desk employees into granting access.
“Unknown threat actors gained initial access to employees’ email accounts, and then pivoted to specifically target login information related to the processing of reimbursement payments to insurance companies, medicare, or similar entities,” the advisory says. “To gain initial access to victim networks, the threat actor acquired credentials through social engineering or phishing. In some observed instances, the threat actor called an organization’s IT Help Desk posing as an employee of the organization, and triggered a password reset for the targeted employee’s organizational account.”
After gaining access, the attackers attempt to remain unnoticed while making changes to payment accounts.
“If a social engineering attempt is successful, the threat actor then logs onto the victim account and attempts to use living off the land techniques (LOTL),” the advisory says. “LOTL gives threat actors the ability to conduct their malicious cyber attacks discreetly as they can camouflage activity with typical system and network behavior. By using LOTL, threat actors were able to amend forms to make ACH changes to patients’ accounts which enabled the diversion of legitimate payments to US bank accounts controlled by the actors, followed by a second transfer of funds to overseas accounts.”
The FBI says employees should be trained to recognize social engineering attacks, and help desk employees in particular should be wary of callers asking for assistance with multi-factor authentication codes.
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