Medical testing company LifeLabs failed to protect customer data, report finds


In 2019, a ransomware attack hit LifeLabs, a Canadian medical testing company. The ransomware encrypted the lab results of 15 million Canadians, and personally identifiable information (PII) of 8.6 million people was stolen.

After noticing the attack, LifeLabs informed its customers and the Canadian privacy regulators, which immediately announced an investigation. The privacy commissioners of both British Columbia and Ontario finished writing a report about the incident in 2020 but LifeLabs managed to hold that up in court for four years. Now the report is publicly available and some of the findings are both shocking and unsurprising.

Read more…
Source: Malwarebytes Labs


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Indian pharmacy chain giant exposed customer data and internal systems

    February 17, 2026

    A major Indian pharmacy chain operated a flawed platform which exposed highly sensitive data of millions of users, experts have warned. DavaIndia Pharmacy, the pharmacy arm of Zota Healthcare, currently runs more than 2,300 stores across the country – however, its platform was bugged in a way that allowed unauthenticated users to create “super admin” ...

  • Major telco breach sees 6.2 million users have personal info leaked

    February 13, 2026

    Dutch telecommunications company Odido has confirmed suffering a cyberattack and losing sensitive data on millions of people. In a notice published on its website, the company says it “deeply regrets” the situation and is “fully committed” to limiting its impact. “Based on investigation, the incident concerns personal data from a customer contact system used by Odido,” ...

  • Hacker warns victims after leaking 6.8 billion emails online

    February 12, 2026

    A hacker claims to have obtained, and leaked, 6.8 billion unique email addresses – and although the claims are unverified at this time, initial reports indicate at least half of those emails are real. Researchers at Cybernews recently found a new post on a popular data leak forum created by a hacker with the alias Adkka72424 ...

  • European Commission probes intrusion into staff mobile management backend

    February 9, 2026

    Brussels is digging into a cyber break-in that targeted the European Commission’s mobile device management systems, potentially giving intruders a peek inside the official phones carried by EU staff. Identified by CERT-EU, the bloc’s computer emergency response team responsible for defending EU institutions, the intrusion was detected on January 30 and affected infrastructure associated with centrally ...

  • Photo-Sharing Platform Flickr Issues Data Breach Warning

    February 6, 2026

    It’s not been the greatest start to February as far as data breaches are concerned. Substack has confirmed it has been hacked, and now Flickr has issued a warning to users concerning a data breach vulnerability that might have leaked their personal data. Although it’s unknown how many users may have been affected at this stage, ...

  • Substack confirms data breach affects users’ email addresses and phone numbers

    February 5, 2026

    Newsletter platform Substack has confirmed a data breach in an email to users. The company said that in October, an “unauthorized third party” accessed user data, including email addresses, phone numbers, and other unspecified “internal metadata.” Substack specified that more sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, and other financial information, was unaffected. In an ...