Президент Колумбії Густаво Петро вже неодноразово критикував військові дії Ізраїлю в Газі, називаючи їх геноцидом
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WASHINGTON — Hackers who breached UnitedHealth’s tech unit in February potentially stole data from a third of Americans, the largest U.S. health insurer’s CEO told a congressional committee on Wednesday.
Two congressional panels grilled CEO Andrew Witty about the cyberattack on the company’s Change Healthcare unit, which processes around 50% of all medical claims in the U.S.
The breach has caused widespread disruptions in claims processing, impacting patients and providers across the country.
Witty fielded heated questions from House Energy and Commerce Committee members about the company’s failure to prevent the breach and contain its fallout.
Pressed for details on the data compromised, Witty said protected health information and personally identifiable information pertaining to “maybe a third” of Americans was stolen.
“We continue to investigate the amount of data involved here,” he added. “We do think it’s going to be substantial.”
The cybercriminal gang AlphV hacked into Change on Feb. 12 using stolen login credentials on an older server that did not have multifactor authentication, Witty said.
“It was … a platform which had only recently become part of the company was in the process of being upgraded,” Witty said, referring to UnitedHealth’s $13 billion acquisition of Change in 2022.
The platform also did not have the security measures prescribed in a joint alert issued by the FBI and U.S. cyber and health officials in December 2023 to specifically warn about AlphV, or BlackCat, targeting healthcare organizations.
UnitedHealth paid the gang around $22 million in bitcoin as ransom, Witty said, adding that however there was no guarantee that the breached data was secure and could not still be leaked. Another hacking group claiming to be an offshoot of AlphV said last month it had a copy of the data, though the company has not verified that claim.
The Senate Finance Committee probed the outsized influence of UnitedHealth – which has a market capitalization of $445 billion and annual revenue of $372 billion – on American health care. But Witty said the company’s problems were not a threat to the broader economy.
Senator Bill Cassidy said senators on the panel “would have to ask, is the dominant role of United too dominant because it is into everything and messing up United messes up everybody?”
“My point is, the size of United becomes a it’s almost a too big to fail and sure, because if it fails, it’s going to bring down far more than it ordinarily would,” Cassidy said.
Witty said in response, “I don’t believe it is because actually despite our size, for example, we have no hospitals in America, we do not own any drug manufacturers.”
Yet, Change processes medical claims for around 900,000 physicians, 33,000 pharmacies, 5,500 hospitals and 600 laboratories in the U.S.
U.S. military members’ data was also stolen in the hack, Witty revealed, without saying how many of them were impacted.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden called the hack a national security threat.
“I believe the bigger the company, the bigger the responsibility to protect its systems from hackers. UHG was a big target long before it was hacked,” he added.
“UnitedHealth Group has not revealed how many patients’ private medical records were stolen, how many providers went without reimbursement, and how many seniors are unable to pick up their prescriptions as a result of the hack,” said Wyden.
In letters to both congressional committees, the American Hospital Association said an internal survey of its members found that 94% of hospitals reported damage to cash flow, and more than half reported “significant or serious” financial damage due to Change’s inability to process claims.
Similarly, 90% of respondents to an American Medical Association survey of doctors said they continue to lose revenue because of the hack, according to the group’s written testimony to the Senate Finance Committee.
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Washington — A majority of Americans believe that China uses TikTok to shape U.S. public opinion, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted as Washington moves closer to potentially banning the Chinese-owned short-video app.
Some 58% of respondents to the two-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, agreed with a statement that the Chinese government uses TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, to “influence American public opinion.” Some 13% disagreed, and the rest were unsure or didn’t answer the question. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to see China as using the app to affect U.S. opinions.
TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on data security efforts and would not share data on its 170 million U.S. users with the Chinese government. The company told Congress last year that it does “not promote or remove content at the request of the Chinese government.”
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Joe Biden last week signed legislation giving ByteDance 270 days to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets or face a ban.
TikTok has vowed to challenge the ban as a violation of the protections of free expression enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and TikTok users are expected to again take legal action. A U.S. judge in Montana in November blocked a state ban on TikTok, citing free-speech concerns.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 50% of Americans supported banning TikTok, while 32% opposed a ban and the rest were unsure. The poll only surveyed U.S. adults and doesn’t reflect the views of people under age 18, who make up a significant portion of TikTok’s users in the United States. About six in 10 poll respondents aged 40 and older supported a ban, compared with about four in 10 aged 18-39.
The poll showed 46% of Americans agreed with a statement that China is using the app to “spy on everyday Americas,” an allegation Beijing has denied.
The app is ubiquitous in America. Even Biden’s re-election campaign is using it as a tool to win over voters ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. Biden’s rival, Republican Donald Trump, who has criticized a potential ban and is the majority owner of the company that operates his social media app Truth Social, has not joined.
A majority of Americans, 60%, said it was inappropriate for U.S. political candidates to use TikTok to promote their campaigns.
Biden’s signing of the law sets a Jan. 19 deadline for a sale — one day before his term is set to expire — but he could extend the deadline by three months if he determines that ByteDance is making progress on divesting the app.
The poll, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 1,022 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
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