University of Mississippi Medical Center Hack Claimed by Medusa

A ransomware group called Medusa today took credit for last month’s cyber attack on the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

UMMC shut down its clinics and cancelled appointments from February 19 to March 2, 2026 to contain the attack. The medical center lost access to phone lines, email, and patient records. 

Commenting on this news is Rebecca Moody, Head of Data Research at Comparitech: 

“The fact that Medusa has now added UMMC to its data leak site suggests a ransom hasn’t been paid — for the data at least. And its demand of $800,000, which is double the average across its other confirmed healthcare attacks from this group, could be for a number of reasons. It may be because Medusa believes the data it’s stolen from UMMC is of a higher value than others, or it could be because of how much publicity the attack has received. 

Whatever the reasoning for the high ransom and whatever the data is that has potentially been stolen, UMMC needs to provide patients and employees with an update as soon as possible. According to our data, the average breach on a healthcare provider following an attack via Medusa involves 195,000 records, which is a significant figure. Understandably, it takes organizations a long time to analyze the breached data and identify everyone who’s been affected (Bell Ambulance is a prime example with its recent increase in those affected from 114,000 to nearly 238,000), but if all employees and patients are aware of a potential data breach from the offset, it helps them mitigate the risks involved with a data leak. 

Anyone whose data is associated with UMMC should start monitoring their accounts for any unauthorized activity and should be on high alert for any potential phishing campaigns, especially those purporting to be from UMMC.”

Once again, healthcare is the target for threat actors. At this point this is not new information. The problem is that this keeps happening. And this needs to stop ASAP as attacks on the healthcare sector are out of control.

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