Hackers have hit a UK-based plastic surgery clinic – Harley Medical Group – and made away with personal information of over 480,000 patients and even tried to blackmail the company in a bid to extort money.
According to a letter sent out to customers, details of customers including their names, dates of birth, email addresses and physical addresses were stolen. The company claims that financial and clinical information of its customers are however safe.
Harley has taken their website offline to fix security issues to thwart future security breach attempts.
“We acted immediately when we became aware that an individual had deliberately bypassed our website security, gaining access to contact information from initial inquiries, in an attempt to extort money from the company,” read one of the statements in the letter sent out by Harley’s chairman Peter Boddy.
“I am sorry that the contact information that you provided in your initial enquiry via our website has been accessed in this way.”
It seems that the information theft has happened from servers which stored details about initial enquires only and that could very well explain company’s claims that financial and clinical information of its customers is safe.
Harley has already informed the police and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) about the security breach and information theft.
