The Black Market For Stolen Health Care Data

President Obama is at Stanford University today, hosting a cybersecurity summit. He and about a thousand guests are trying to figure out how to protect consumers online from hacks and data breaches.

Meanwhile, in the cyber underworld, criminals are trying to figure out how to turn every piece of our digital life into cash. The newest frontier: health records.

I grab a chair and sit down with Greg Virgin, CEO of the security firm RedJack.

"There are a lot of sites that have this information, and it's tough to tell the health records from the financial records," he says.

We're visiting sites that you can't find in a Google search. They have names that end with .su and .so, instead of the more familiar .com and .org.

After poking around for about an hour, we come across an advertisement by someone selling Medicare IDs.

We're not revealing the site address or name because we don't want the dealer to know we're watching.

According to the online rating system similar to Yelp, but for criminal sales the dealer delivers what's promised and gets 5 out of 5 stars. "He definitely seems legit" to the underworld, Virgin says.

The dealer is selling a value pack that includes 10 people's Medicare numbers only it's not cheap. It costs 22 bitcoin about $4,700 according to today's exchange rate.

Security experts say health data is showing up in the black market more and more. While prices vary, this data is more expensive than stolen credit card numbers which, they say, typically go for a few quarters or dollars.

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The Black Market For Stolen Health Care Data

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