Federal legislators confirm February's data breach at UnitedHealth subsidiary Change Healthcare was the largest in the country's history.

A February cyberattack on a UnitedHealth subsidiary compromised the personal data of some one-third of Americans.

UnitedHealth, the largest U.S. health insurance provider, blamed a Russia-based ransomware gang for the huge data breach of U.S. medical data.

We knew the UnitedHealth Group cyberattack from earlier this year was bad. But now we know just how all-encompassing the incident really was.The Latest Tech News, Delivered to Your Inbox

Staying safe from hackers is hard enough as it is but even if you take all the necessary precautions, your personal data could still end up being exposed online as the result of a data breach and that’s exactly what just happened to more than 800,000 people.

The attack on Change Healthcare took place in February 2024, and is now thought to be the most disruptive ransomware attacks ever to strike the US healthcare industry after the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights updated the number on its data breach portal to 100 million.

According to a government report, every year an estimated $60 billion is lost to Medicaid fraud, with much of that traced to stolen medical records.

UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty testified in May that the breach may impact a third of the US population, about 112 million citizens.

The breach report from Change comes as data breaches in the healthcare industry affect more Americans and expose sensitive health data. During an interview at the HLTH conference earlier this week, OCR Director Melanie Fontes Rainer said about 140 million people were affected by large breaches in 2023, up from 51 million in 2022.

The February hack at UnitedHealth's tech unit Change affected the personal information of 100 million people, the U.S. health department's website showed, making it the largest healthcare data breach in the country.

The February ransomware attack on Change Healthcare coughed up Social Security numbers as well as billing and health information.