Colorado Medicaid, CHP+ members’ personal data may have been stolen in cyberattack

People covered by Medicaid or Child Health Plan Plus should take steps to protect their identities after their information likely was exposed in a cyberattack, the state agency that runs the programs said Friday.

On Thursday, several U.S. government agencies announced they’d been hit by an attack on a piece of software called MOVEit, which allows organizations to transfer large files in a way that’s similar to consumer products like Dropbox.

A criminal group called Clop has claimed responsibility and demanded extortion payments from companies, but said it didn’t mean to hit government agencies and would delete their data, according to The Washington Post. There’s no way to hold it to that promise, though.

The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing announced Friday that a vendor it worked with had used MOVEit, and there’s a good chance that Medicaid and Child Health Plan Plus members’ information may have been stolen. The department will notify individuals once it knows who was affected, it said.