A data breach at the dental benefits administrator DentaQuest has reportedly exposed the sensitive data of 2.6 million accounts.
The security incident came to light last month, when the infamous extortion group ShinyHunters listed the company on its data leak site and claimed to have stolen more than 234 GB of data.
Following what the threat actor describes as a failure to reach an agreement with the company, the data was publicly leaked.
DentaQuest, part of Sun Life, is one of the largest dental benefits administrators in the United States. It manages dental insurance plans and provider networks for Medicaid programs, Medicare Advantage plans, employers, health plans, and individual customers.
The company says it serves 35 million customers, operates programs in 50 states, and has a network of 140,000 dentists and dental specialists.
On June 2, DentaQuest confirmed on its website that its networks had been breached and the incident caused “limited disruption” in customer service.
“DentaQuest is actively managing a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to a limited portion of our network,” reads the statement.
“Upon discovery of the initial incident, we took immediate action to secure our environment, contain the attack, and mitigate the threat.”
“Our systems remain fully operational, and we continue to serve our clients with limited disruption.”
The firm also stated that it engaged external experts to help with the investigation and determine the data that was compromised.
Yesterday, data breach alerting service Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) analyzed the leaked information and found that it contained records for 2.6 million accounts. Specifically, the following was exposed in the leaked dataset:
- Email addresses
- Full names
- Phone numbers
- Government-issued IDs
- Health insurance information
- Genders
- Dates of birth
Although DentaQuest’s statement did not confirm that the data breach affected its clients, HIBP is known to validate leaked datasets using multiple verification methods.
HIBP also stated that roughly 66% of the exposed records were present in its database from past incidents affecting other organizations and services.
People who may have had their information exposed in this incident should be cautious about all incoming communications, as the leaked data increases the risk of social engineering and phishing attacks.
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