Ransomware Heist: 169,017 Patients at Risk in Shocking Health-Care Breach

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A scruffy, sneaky security breach has slipped its muddy paws into a South Carolina-based federally qualified health center, potentially compromising the sensitive information of 169,017 patients.

The Office of the Maine Attorney General squeaks that Sandhills Medical Foundation discovered the data breach on May 8th, 2025-nearly a week after it happened on May 2nd. The whole muddle compromised the information of 169,017 people.

In a notice sent to affected individuals on April 28th, Sandhills says it fell prey to a ransomware attack. This nasty little threat usually involves dastardly villains planting malicious encryption gremlins into a network that will lock the data away unless a ransom is paid.

Sandhills says it wrestled the network back in a jiffy and then summoned cybersecurity wizards, law enforcement, and an independent forensic firm to toss their magnifying glasses over the mystery and get to the bottom of it.

“That investigation determined an unauthorized third party accessed our server directly and obtained personal information for select patients. From there, we began an extensive data mining process on the information that was involved so we could determine which individuals were impacted by the incident.”

The healthcare firm says the compromised information includes the personal and medical data of affected patients.

“Affected information varied by individual and may have included some elements of information that constitute personal health information and your date of birth.”

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2026-05-06 10:21