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Planned Parenthood of Montana announced on Wednesday a “cybersecurity incident” that was first identified on August 28, according to a new report from Cyberscoop. The healthcare organization had roughly 93 gigabytes of data stolen by hackers affiliated with RansomHub, who are reportedly giving Planned Parenthood until September 11 to pay an undisclosed amount or have all of the data leaked online.
Martha Fuller, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Montana, said in a statement to EM360Tech that the organization “immediately implemented our incident response protocols, including taking portions of our network offline as a proactive security measure.”
It’s not immediately clear what kind of data has been stolen and it’s unknown whether patient files have been impacted. Planned Parenthood offers a wide range of health services, but mainstream American perceptions typically associate the organization only with providing abortion care. Whatever is ultimately leaked, if that does come to pass, will almost certainly become a political football in today’s highly politicized environment.
Started in February 2024, RansomHub works under a “ransomware-as-a-service” model, encrypting and exfiltrating data from at least 210 known victims, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Those 2010 victims have been in some of the most sensitive areas of national infrastructure and anything else that helps society run smoothly, according to the CISA, including, “water and wastewater, information technology, government services and facilities, healthcare and public health, emergency services, food and agriculture, financial services, commercial facilities, critical manufacturing, transportation, and communications critical infrastructure sectors.”
Planned Parenthood acknowledged the existence of the claims by RansomHub that it hacked the healthcare group but didn’t confirm or deny RansomHub was actually behind the attack.
“We are aware of the RansomHub post, and want to assure our community that we are taking this matter very seriously,” Fuller said. “We have reported this incident to federal law enforcement, and will support their investigation.”
Abortion is a vitally important issue in American life, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2022 to overturn 50 years of legal precedent by abolishing the federal right to an abortion recognized in Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision has been a disaster for human rights in the U.S. and many Americans are understandably upset about having their rights stripped of them.
And it’s for that reason many political pundits believe abortion will be a key factor in this November’s election. After all, former president Donald Trump was instrumental in taking away those rights by appointing three Supreme Court justices with views completely outside the mainstream. Trump is currently trailing his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, who notably supports abortion rights, in the key battleground states that will decide the election.
Planned Parenthood said on Wednesday that the group is working to restore its systems but there’s no timeline on when that may happen.
“We are grateful to our IT staff and cyber security partners, who are working around the clock to securely restore impacted systems as quickly as possible, and who are tirelessly investigating the cause and scope of the incident,” Fuller said. “That investigation is ongoing.”
Planned Parenthood of Montana didn’t immediately respond to questions sent Thursday. Gizmodo will update this post when we hear back.
