On February 4th, Anthem Inc., the nation’s second-largest health insurer, disclosed that hackers had broken into its servers and stolen data from over 80 million customer records. The information stolen from the insurance enterprise includes names, birthdays, medical IDs, social security numbers, street addresses, e-mail addresses and employment information, including income data.
Bloomberg reports that U.S. federal investigator is pointing the finger at state-sponsored hackers from China. Although unconfirmed, that suspicion would explain a confidential alert the FBI circulated last week warning that Chinese hackers were targeting personally identifiable information from U.S. commercial and government networks. A spokesman for the FBI said the agency is “aware of the Anthem intrusion and is investigating the matter” and praised the insurer for its “initial response in promptly notifying the FBI after observing suspicious network activity.”
Anthem, Inc. published an FAQ page in an attempt to provide answers to the countless questions and concerns of customers impacted. In one FAQ post, Anthem stated that they would mail notices to customers affected in order to provide clarity over how their data is being protected and any next steps that customers would need to take. It took only minutes for phishers and phone fraudster to capitalizing on the public’s fear over the massive data breach by unleashing a flood of targeted phishing attacks and cold calls to impacted customers with the intent of stealing even more financial and personal data from consumers.
As shown below, phishing emails were outfitted to appear as legitimate as possible:
Anthem Phising Email
Anthem, Inc. has since updated their FAQ to address the flood of phishing and phone fraud attacks:
Anthem FAQ
Anthem, Inc. further clarified that all notifications will be sent to affected consumers through regular snail mail in the coming weeks. If you’re a current or former Anthem member, we strongly encourage you to be aware of these types of scams and expect them to escalate in the coming weeks.