State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Unemployment fraud in Washington linked to health care ransomware

StateScoop: Some of the fraudulent unemployment payments that Washington state officials said they’ve paid out during the coronavirus pandemic are connected to a ransomware attack against a private health care organization, according to research published Wednesday by the private investigation firm Kroll.

In their report, Kroll’s investigators wrote that the health care company — which they did not name — was infiltrated in early May by Russian-speaking hackers using a ransomware variant known as Mamba. The malware encrypted several machines on the health provider’s network, but unknown to the organization, it was preceded by an effort to defraud Washington’s unemployment system.

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