Black market medical record prices drop to under $10, criminals switch to ransomware

The black market value of stolen medical records dropped dramatically this year, and criminals shifted their efforts from stealing data to spreading ransom ware, according to a report released this morning.

Hackers are now offering stolen records at between $1.50 and $10 each, said Anthony James, CMO at San Mateo, Calif.-based security firm TrapX, the company that produced the report.

That down a bit since this summer, when a hacker offered 10 million patient records for about $820,000 — or about $12 per record — and even a bigger drop from 2012, when the World Privacy Forum put the street value of medical records at around $50 each.

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