{
	"id": "d7c7ec5e-cf84-43c1-8e33-c392b0842f85",
	"created_at": "2026-04-06T02:10:36.241561Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T13:11:26.08294Z",
	"deleted_at": null,
	"sha1_hash": "deaf6c5d4ed5e30373153c6138b5e9b8aab20305",
	"title": "Health Care Social Engineering Campaign",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
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	"plain_text": "Health Care Social Engineering Campaign\r\nBy Hayden Evans 4 April 2024\r\nPublished: 2024-04-04 · Archived: 2026-04-06 01:54:36 UTC\r\nKey Points\r\nIn early April 2024, ReliaQuest investigated numerous similar incidents targeting customers in the health\r\ncare sector.\r\nWe concluded that these intrusions form part of a new campaign targeting health care organizations with\r\nthe goal of accessing banking information.\r\nThe attacks used social engineering techniques against help desk staff to bypass account access controls.\r\nSecurity teams should review the provided recommendations, which include introducing additional\r\nverification measures for help desk requests, to defend against similar attacks.\r\nIn early April 2024, ReliaQuest responded to multiple similar customer incidents in which an adversary targeted\r\nhealth care organizations. In this ongoing campaign, the attacker gained access to the impacted companies by\r\nusing social engineering techniques against help desk employees, prompting them to reset multifactor\r\nauthentication (MFA) credentials. The attacks were highly targeted and shared the same infrastructure, techniques,\r\nvictim department, and likely motivation.\r\nCampaign Identification\r\nIn early April 2024, ReliaQuest investigated several intrusions impacting health care organizations that all\r\nfeatured similar tactics and infrastructure:\r\nFocusing on user accounts from the healthcare companies’ Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)\r\ndepartments\r\nUsing social engineering techniques against the targets’ help desk employees after MFA blocked account\r\naccess efforts\r\nAttempting to access bank accounts, likely to alter routing information (indicating a financial motivation)\r\nThese commonalities indicate that the incidents almost certainly represent a campaign being conducted by the\r\nsame threat group. This conclusion corresponds with a notification released by Health ISAC (H-ISAC) on April 3,\r\n2024, which highlighted the same attacker techniques.\r\nWe identified that the attacker’s infrastructure involved several different hosting providers with remote desktop\r\nprotocol (RDP) enabled, enabling the adversary to pivot to other hosting providers to change source location\r\nhttps://www.reliaquest.com/blog/health-care-social-engineering-campaign/\r\nPage 1 of 3\n\nduring authentication events.\r\nAttack Flow\r\nAuthentication Attempts: In each of the incidents we investigated, the adversary first attempted to authenticate\r\nto the organization’s VPN portal via several user accounts belonging to employees in the RCM department. The\r\nauthentication attempts failed due to location-based conditional access policies and the attacker’s use of expired\r\ncredentials, suggesting these login details had been obtained from prior breaches. This suggests the adversary\r\nhighly likely conducted extensive reconnaissance prior to the attack: targeting specific users in the RCM\r\ndepartment and using gathered account credentials to execute the campaign.\r\nMFA Block: We observed the adversary changing their infrastructure to match the target organization’s location,\r\neffectively bypassing the targets’ location conditional access policies. After using the correct location and\r\ncredentials to authenticate, the threat actor was then blocked by the organization’s MFA measures.\r\nHelp Desk Contact: The attacker then contacted the organization’s help desk to request a reset of the account’s\r\nMFA. The threat actor provided personal information associated with the target user to help desk staff (again\r\nhighlighting the extensive resource development involved in the campaign). The adversary provided the last four\r\ndigits of the user’s social security number, their date of birth, and their address, satisfying validation requirements.\r\nNext, they registered a new MFA device or changed the MFA method to authenticate successfully and then reset\r\nthe account’s password to maintain persistence.\r\nBank Account Access: After compromising the targeted account, the attacker accessed the victim’s Outlook inbox\r\nand deleted emails containing password reset notifications. The attacker proceeded to search through the account’s\r\nemails and SharePoint for sensitive information. They then generated a one-time password to access a banking\r\nportal, likely to find and alter the bank account’s routing information.\r\nAfter the intrusion was identified, the ReliaQuest Threat Hunting team worked with the impacted customers to\r\ncontain the incidents and eradicate the adversary’s access.\r\nThreat Forecast\r\nAs technical controls become more resilient and deny initial access, adversaries will adapt to use alternative\r\ntechniques—such as social engineering—to compromise victims. By blending in as a regular user, attackers\r\nemploying such methods effectively bypass security controls like endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems\r\nand behavioral analytics. It is realistically possible that voice-generated artificial intelligence will further enable\r\nattackers to target organizations and conduct social engineering by impersonating legitimate users, regardless of\r\nlanguage barriers. This campaign emphasizes the need for organizations to adapt to the changing threat by\r\nimplementing further verification for help desk requests and authentication from anomalous devices.\r\nWhat ReliaQuest Is Doing\r\nAfter identifying the shared attacker infrastructure, the ReliaQuest Threat Hunting team initiated hunts across the\r\nenvironments of customers in the healthcare industry and has notified impacted organizations. ReliaQuest has\r\nhttps://www.reliaquest.com/blog/health-care-social-engineering-campaign/\r\nPage 2 of 3\n\nadded the IOCs we observed as part of this campaign to the GreyMatter threat feed, to enable customers to detect\r\nmalicious activity associated with this campaign.\r\nRecommendations and Best Practices\r\nImplement stricter controls for help desk requests with an emphasis on multifactor device resets. Additional\r\ncontrols could include video verification and verification by management.\r\nIntroduce additional process controls around help desk requests for identity administrators (Okta, Entra,\r\netc.), and extend these controls to finance and finance-adjacent roles for the immediate future. These\r\ncontrols could include additional identity verification steps and escalation to administrators for\r\nauthorization.\r\nUse device certificate-based authentication for VPNs.\r\nCreate device-based and location-based conditional access controls\r\nRefrain from directly providing the help desk phone number or hyperlinks to help desk and password reset\r\nprocedures on login portals.\r\nIOCs\r\n74.50.79[.]78\r\n45.126.208[.]87\r\n66.23.206[.]199\r\n170.130.55[.]159\r\n69.50.92[.]18\r\n105.112.179[.]134\r\nSource: https://www.reliaquest.com/blog/health-care-social-engineering-campaign/\r\nhttps://www.reliaquest.com/blog/health-care-social-engineering-campaign/\r\nPage 3 of 3",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"MITRE"
	],
	"origins": [
		"web"
	],
	"references": [
		"https://www.reliaquest.com/blog/health-care-social-engineering-campaign/"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"health-care-social-engineering-campaign"
	],
	"threat_actors": [],
	"ts_created_at": 1775441436,
	"ts_updated_at": 1775826686,
	"ts_creation_date": 0,
	"ts_modification_date": 0,
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