Dental Data Breach Exposes Private Details Of 8.9M Patients And That Really Bites

A ransomware group has claimed responsibility for breaching MCNA (Managed Care of North America) Dental data samples and obtaining pertinent information of nearly nine million of its patients. If you know of anyone with MCNA accounts, you may want to pass this information along.

MCNA Dental, one of the largest dental providers for government-sponsored Medicaid and CHIP programs, filed a notification with the Office of the Maine Attorney General of a data breach affecting 8,923,662 people (including patients, parents, guardians, or guarantors). The breach occurred between February 26 and March 7, 2023, and was only discovered on May 3, 2023. On March 7, the alleged group behind the attack, called LockBit, threatened to publish 700GB of stolen personal and healthcare information unless they were paid $10 million. Nonetheless, on April 7, LockBit made all the stolen data available for anybody to download (for a fee, of course).

According to MCNA, the datasets that LockBit was able to steal from MCNA's network contain the following:

• First and last name
• Address
• Date of birth
• Phone number
• Email address(es)
• Social Security number
• Driver’s license number/other government-issued ID number
• Health insurance (plan information, insurance company, member number, Medicaid-Medicare ID numbers)
• Care for teeth or braces (visits, dentist name, doctor name, past care, x-rays/photos, medicines, and treatment)
• Bills and insurance claims

Since the incident, MCNA has attempted to notify affected customers, taken steps to beef up computer systems security, and contacted law enforcement to assist in any identity theft investigations. As a precautionary measure perchance the data lands in the hands of nefarious threat actors, the company is offering to the nearly 9 million users a year of free IDX identify theft protection and monitoring service. For affected users whom MCNA doesn't have the current address to mail the notice to, the free benefit can be accessed via MCNA's direct link.