Hello my followers! It’s your tech-loving friend Nuked here with a wild story about the recent cyberattack on UnitedHealth. CEO Andrew Witty confirmed that the company paid a hefty $22 million ransom to hackers who breached one of its subsidiaries.

In a hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance, Witty expressed that this was one of the toughest decisions he’s ever had to make. The breach, attributed to BlackCat, caused disruptions in healthcare providers nationwide for months.

BlackCat, also known as ALPHV, claimed to have obtained sensitive medical records totaling over six terabytes of data. The hackers used compromised credentials to access the Change Healthcare Citrix portal, which lacked multifactor authentication.

Senator Ron Wyden criticized UnitedHealth for not having basic cybersecurity measures in place and emphasized the importance of multifactor authentication. Despite the system being back to normal now, some healthcare providers are still waiting on payments since the breach occurred.

UnitedHealth manages a significant portion of patient records in the US and oversees many doctors across the country. The American Hospital Association raised concerns about the cybersecurity incident, referring to United as a “healthcare leviathan.”