State Health Department Falls Victim To Hackers

LANSING (WWJ) - The Michigan Department of Community Health has fallen victim to hackers.

The state has sent out letters warning residents that computers hosting the Michigan Cancer Consortium website were accessed by hackers, breaching the files of nearly 50,000 people — including the files of WWJ Newsradio 950's Stephanie Davis.

MDCH spokesperson Angela Minicuci says these are not medical records.

"They were reports that contained information about individuals such as their names, birth dates and social security numbers. And then it included with that, testing results and testing dates," Minicuci said. "It did not include any address or identifiable contact information because, again, these are not medical records — they were simply testing reports."

Minicuci said the department has removed its files from the hacked server.

"Once we detected that this breach took place, all of the reports were removed from this website and are now only hosted on an MDCH secure server, so there's no way that they can be accessed going forward," she said. "And now, being that the reports have been removed, we've corrected the issue."

Minicuci said they have not had any reports of identity theft as a result of the breach, but she suggest people who received the letter from the state file a fraud alert with the three credit bureaus.