Hackers demand nearly 1.1 million euros to not leak medical data

This article was last updated on August 18, 2025

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Hackers demand nearly 1.1 million euros to not leak medical data

The criminals who have stolen the medical data of hundreds of thousands of Dutch people at a laboratory in Rijswijk demand nearly 1.1 million euros from the company to prevent the data from being published.

This weekend A message appeared On the Dark Web in which the Hackergroep Nova threatened to make the data public. In the meantime, the hackers also mention an amount: Nova wants Clinical Diagnostics to pay 11 bitcoins, which amounts to almost 1.1 million euros.

The hackers claim that another interested buyer wants the data for that amount, although that can also be bluff.

‘Appointments violated’

Nova posted the threat this weekend on the Dark Web, with the message that Clinical Diagnostics would have violated appointments with Nova. Which appointment that is is not mentioned. It may be about involving the police in the data breach.

Clinical Diagnostics has previously ransom To Nova, the hackers group confirmed to RTL News. The company probably did that to prevent the data from being published in the first instance. It is not clear how much money has been paid.

Now the hackers group blackmails the company again. A countdown clock on the Dark Web gives Clinical Diagnostics until the night of 28 to 29 August to meet the new requirement of the hackers.

Hundreds of thousands of victims

The hackers have stolen data from 485,000 women who participated in the population screening for cervical cancer. It is about data from people who had a smear made at the doctor, or did a self -test at home. Among other things, the name, address, the date of birth, citizen service number and possibly test results have been leaked.

In addition, the data of more than 50,000 women were published on the Dark Web. There were also data between other examinations, for example into the vagina, penis, urine, skin tissue or wound fluid.

This concerns data from people who have been to the doctor or in a treatment clinic for this. They used – just like the Dutch population screening – the same laboratory in Rijswijk to have the research done.

Nova had put the data set of 50,000 Dutch people online as an example. It is probably only a small part of the stolen data. In total, the group claims to have stolen 300 gigabytes of data. The files that were online were together 85 MB. That would amount to 0.03 percent of the total size of the stolen data.