Star Health hit with ransom demand over data leak

India's biggest health insurer, Star Health, said on Saturday that it h received a ransom demand of $68,000 from a cyber hacker related to a recent leak of sensitive customer data and medical records.

A reputational crisis faces company, with a market capitalization of about $4 billion since a Reuters report on September 20 went live and detailed how a hacker utilised Telegram chatbots and a website to expose customers' personal information, including tax details and medical claims.

Star Health has announced that it has launched an internal investigation following incident and has initiated legal action against both hacker and messaging platform, Telegram, which has been associated with data leak. hacker's website continues distributing samples of information on its customers, ding anor layer of complexity to situation of insurer, whose shares have fallen 11% since news broke.

This was after investigations by Indian stock exchanges on allegations against company's chief security officer, Amarjeet Khanuja, involving data breach. Star Health said no wrongdoing has so far been traced to part of Khanuja as it said to continue with its probe.

Although Star Health is said to have issued notices on multiple occasions, Telegram has declined to reveal information about such accounts or relinquish permanent action against accounts involving xenZen, identified with hacking. It was Star Health that approached Indian authorities for identification. For its part, Telegram also did not respond to questions on development. Until now, platform has claimed it took down bots after being informed about same by Reuters.