Fred Hutch discloses a cyberattack. Hunters International claims responsibility

The Hunters International ransomware gang claims to have hacked the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Fred Hutch).

After the seizeure of the Hive gang’s infrastructure. It’s believed to be rebranded as Hunters International. The group using a code that is very similar to the one used by the Hive gang.

The ransomware gang has added the organization to its dark web leak site and is threatening the victim to leak the alleged stolen data.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is an independent, nonprofit research institute based in Seattle, Washington that operates a network of clinical sites. Its research focuses on cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment. Fred Hutch investigators are making groundbreaking discoveries in cancer genomics, immunotherapy, precision medicine, and other fields.

Earlier in December, Fred Hutch disclosed a cyber attack that took place on November 19, 2023. Threat actors had access to its infrastructure.

The organization immediately started the incident response procedure. It took impacted systems offline, a circumstance that suggests that Fred Hutch was the victim of a ransomware attack. It also notified federal law enforcement and launched an investigation into the incident with the help of a leading forensic firm.

In a notice published on its website, Fred Hutch pointed out that all clinics are open and actively serving patients and implemented additional information technology security measures and deployed additional defensive tools and increased monitoring activities.

The ransomware group initially claimed to have exfiltrated 533.1GB of data from the company and published thumbnails of some alleged stolen documents. However, during the time of this writing, the gang removed Fred Hutch from the leak site.