Cyber attack on Singapore health database steals details of 1.5m including prime minister

A major cyber attack on Singapore's largest health group leaked the personal and healthcare information of 1.5 million people, including the country's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The massive data leak hit around one-fifth of the city state's population, making it the biggest in Singapore's history. 

The "deliberate, targeted and well-planned" attack on SingHealth, the country's main healthcare group, was aimed at patients who visited clinics in the last three years, Singapore's health ministry said.

"It was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs," the ministry said. "The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines."

The prime minister said "only a few countries in the world" had the level of sophistication to carry out the attack. Cyber security experts said the attack could be the work of nation-state actors, given the scale of the breach and the targeting of government leaders.

The Singapore health ministry said the breach occurred between June and July this year. Investigators detected unusual activity on on its systems on July 4 and shut out the attackers. Data on patients between May 2015 and July this year was stolen.

The cyber attack follows other suspected state-sponsored hacks this year, such as the "Olympic Destroyer" cyber attack, thought to have been carried out against South Korea during the Winter Olympics and was variously pinned on hackers from China, North Korea or Russia.

 It is not the first cyber attack to hit Singapore. In 2013, the country was hit by sustained attacks from the political hacking group Anonymous. Hackers also targeted the prime minister's website over censorship in the country.

Last year, a massive cyber attack hit companies and organisations across the world, including NHS computers. The so-called "WannaCry" attack locked down computers at NHS trusts and hit 300,000 computers worldwide.