UnitedHealth CEO tells lawmakers the company paid hackers a million ransom

UnitedHealth CEO tells lawmakers the company paid hackers a $22 million ransom

Published

1 year ago

May 1, 2024

admin

UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty confirmed for the first time that the company paid a $22 million ransom to hackers who breached its subsidiary Change Healthcare and caused widespread fallout across the health-care sector. Witty’s comments were made during a Wednesday hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Change Healthcare provides payment, revenue management and other solutions like e-prescription software. The company disconnected affected systems when the threat was detected, leaving many doctors temporarily unable to fill prescriptions or get paid for their services.

UnitedHealth told CNBC in April that it paid a ransom to try and protect patient data. Earlier reports had discovered a $22 million transfer on Bitcoin’s blockchain, but the company had not confirmed the figure until now.

“As chief executive officer, the decision to pay a ransom was mine,” Witty said. “This was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

UnitedHealth is one of the largest companies in the world, with a roughly $450 billion market cap. Its business unit Optum — which provides care to 103 million customers — and Change Healthcare — which touches one in three patient records — merged in 2022.

Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in his opening remarks that the Change Healthcare breach serves as a “dire warning about the consequences of too-big-to-fail mega-corporations.”

“Companies that are so big have an obligation to protect their customers and to lead on this issue,” Wyden said.

Witty told the committee that cybercriminals accessed Change Healthcare through a server that was not protected by multi-factor authentication, or MFA, which requires users to verify their identity in at least two different ways. He said UnitedHealth now has MFA in place across all external-facing systems.

“As a result of this malicious cyberattack, patients and providers have experienced disruptions and people are worried about their private health data,” Witty said. “To all those impacted, let me be very clear: I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., held up a bright yellow copy of “Hacking for Dummies” during the hearing, saying the breach is UnitedHealth’s responsibility to fix.

“This is some basic stuff that was missed, so shame on internal audit, external audit and your systems folks tasked with redundancy, they’re not doing their job,” Tillis said.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that UnitedHealth discovered that a cyber threat actor accessed part of Change Healthcare’s information technology network in late February.

Witty said Change Healthcare’s core systems are back online, though some of its secondary support functions are still being restored.

UnitedHealth said in February that the ransomware group Blackcat was behind the attack. Blackcat, which also goes by the names Noberus and ALPHV, steals sensitive data from institutions and threatens to publish it unless a ransom is paid, according to a December release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

UnitedHealth confirmed in April that files containing protected health information and personally identifiable information were compromised in the breach. The company said a data review is ongoing, so it could be months before the company can notify affected individuals.

Witty said Wednesday that UnitedHealth is working with regulators to assess the breach and to inform people if their information has been compromised “as soon as possible.”

Early in March, UnitedHealth launched a temporary funding assistance program to help support providers that have experienced cash flow disruptions due to the cyberattack. There are no fees, interest or other costs on top of the payments, and providers have 45 days to repay the funds once their standard payment operations resume.

During the hearing, Witty said the company has not yet asked anyone for loan repayments, and it will be up to providers to determine when their operations have officially returned to normal.

Witty did not directly disclose whether UnitedHealth will provide additional support to providers who may be contending with other loans and interest payments because of the breach.

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., pressed Witty to share how UnitedHealth is working to ensure something like the Change Healthcare breach will not happen again. Witty said the company plans to share what it discovers about the breach with others, adding that there’s a need to focus on reducing the rate of cyberattacks on the health-care sector.

“We are clearly trying to take our responsibility in this attack. We are also trying to learn from it,” he said.

Technology

We’re raising our Corning price target after a shortsighted post-earnings decline

Published

1 hour ago

October 28, 2025

admin

We're raising our Corning price target after a shortsighted post-earnings decline

Technology

Can AI create next ‘Grand Theft Auto’? Take-Two Interactive CEO says no

Published

2 hours ago

October 28, 2025

admin

Can AI create next 'Grand Theft Auto'? Take-Two Interactive CEO says no

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, said he is not a “naysayer” when it comes to the promise of artificial intelligence. But at the same time, Zelnick, who leads the company that publishes the “Grand Theft Auto,” “NBA 2K,” “Red Dead” and “Borderlands” video game series, said the signs that the technology is having an impact on game development and production are “still limited.”

That’s for two reasons, Zelnick told a room of technology executives at CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on Tuesday.

The first reason — which is increasingly placing AI companies at odds with Hollywood, musicians and other creative industries — is intellectual property.

“We have to protect our intellectual property, but more than that, we have to be mindful of others,” Strauss told CNBC’s Steve Kovach in an interview at the CNBC event. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable.”

The data-rights clash between content owners and the AI industry has resulted in a string of licensing deals, lawsuits and ongoing criticism as AI companies continue to seek out more data sets to train their large language models.

However, the debate took another twist upon the release of OpenAI’s video creation app Sora last month, which allows users to generate near-realistic, short-form AI videos through prompts. That has opened the door for a new set of concerns around deepfakes and the usage of the voice and likenesses of not only famous actors, musicians and animated characters, but also any person.

Strauss said that when it comes to AI usage at game publishers like Take-Two, it’s not only important that the created content stands up to copyright laws but also protects people’s rights. “There are constraints,” he said.

But perhaps the bigger hurdle when it comes to utilizing more AI in game production is one at the center of what he believes is why the company continues to be successful.

“Let’s say there were no constraints [on AI]. Could we push a button tomorrow and create an equivalent to the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ marketing plan?” he said. “The answer is no. A, you can’t do that yet, and B, I am of the view that you wouldn’t end up with anything very good. You end up with something pretty derivative.”

Strauss said that is due to AI inherently being “backward looking” because its computation is tied to big data sets of old information.

Often, he said, what AI produces can feel new because it’s using predictive models, “and there are many, many, many things in life that are predictable based on data,” and there are plenty of things that data can solve for.

While that may help with solving something as complex as a cure for a disease or as simple as biology homework, Strauss said that when it comes to creating the sorts of multi-layered universes that Take-Two’s video games have become known for, it’s another story.

“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that and that applies to lots of things,” he said. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.”

Maintaining that creative edge has been critical for Take-Two, one of the last standing public video game developers after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and Electronic Arts announced last month that it will be acquired by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners in an all-cash deal worth $55 billion.

“We aim to create franchises that are permanent,” Strauss said, noting that Take-Two has 11 franchises that have sold at least five million games upon release, in addition to more than 20 popular mobile games.

The company’s biggest franchise, “Grand Theft Auto,” is set to launch its next iteration in May 2026 and will likely set new sales records. Strauss said that the previous game in the series, “Grand Theft Auto V,” had $1 billion in sales in the first three days of its launch in 2013.

“The team’s creativity is extraordinary, and what [Take-Two subsidiary] Rockstar Games tries to do, and so far has done over and over again, is create something that approaches perfection,” he said. “There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven,” Strauss added.

Technology

Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

Published

3 hours ago

October 28, 2025

admin

Jensen Huang says Nvidia's AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks to members of the media prior to the keynote address at the Nvidia AI summit in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC conference on Tuesday that its Blackwell graphics processing units — the company’s fastest AI chips — are now in full production in Arizona.

Previously, Nvidia’s fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan.

Huang said that President Donald Trump had asked him nine months ago to bring manufacturing back to U.S. shores.

“The first thing that President Trump asked me for is bring manufacturing back,” Huang said. “Bring manufacturing back because it’s necessary for national security. Bring manufacturing back because we want the jobs. We want that part of the economy.”

Earlier this month, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced that the first Blackwell wafers had been produced in a facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Wafers are the base material on which semiconductors are etched onto.

Nvidia said in a video that Blackwell-based systems will now be assembled in the U.S., too.

Much of what the company announced on Tuesday at its conference in Washington was for an audience of policymakers to convince them of the essential role that Nvidia plays, and that it would hurt U.S. interests to restrict its exports.

Huang said on Tuesday on a panel before his speech that Nvidia was holding its conference in Washington to allow Trump to attend, according to CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos, but the president is currently on a trip in Asia.

Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to meet with Huang on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report.

Demand for the company’s GPUs remains high, with 6 million Blackwell GPUs shipped in the last four quarters, Huang said Tuesday. Nvidia expects $500 billion in GPU sales between the Blackwell generation and next year’s Rubin chips combined, he added.

Cell networks ‘built on foreign technologies’

Additionally, Huang Tuesday said Nvidia would partner with Finland-based Nokia to build gear for telecommunications, an industry that he said was worth $3 trillion. As part of the partnership, Nvidia will take a $1 billion stake in Nokia.

Huang said that Nvidia is building chips for 5G and 6G base stations because it’s important to have wireless networks based on American technology.

“Thank you for helping the United States bring telecommunication technology back to America,” Huang said to Nokia CEO Justin Hotard during his speech.

The deal is an appeal to Western policymakers who have long had concerns about the amount of technology from China’s Huawei that is used for cellular networks around the world.

“Our fundamental communication fabric is built on foreign technologies,” Huang said. “That has to stop, and we have an opportunity to do that, especially during this fundamental platform shift.”

Nokia will use Nvidia chips in its future base stations, which are the pricey computers that distribute cellular signals. Huawei gear, the market leader, was effectively banned in the U.S. in 2018, leaving Nokia and Ericcson as the primary equipment vendors for U.S. networks.

Huang said that Nokia would be using a new product called Nvidia ARC that combines its Grace GPU, a Blackwell GPU and the company’s networking parts. Huang said that AI delivered over next-generation 6G networks could help operate robots and deliver more accurate weather forecasts.

Stakes are high

The location of the conference carries significance as Nvidia makes the case that it is a core part of the “U.S technology stack.”

Huang has argued that it would be better for American interests if Chinese AI developers got used to U.S. technology like Nvidia’s chips, rather than forcing the Chinese to develop their own AI chips.

“Nvidia is a proud American company building the U.S. AI infrastructure that will ensure our country leads the world in shaping the future of innovation,” Kari Briski, Nvidia’s vice president of generative AI software for enterprise, told reporters on a Monday call.

The stakes are high for Nvidia. U.S. export restrictions have already cost Nvidia billions of dollars in lost sales.

In April, the U.S. government informed Nvidia that its H20 chip, which was specially designed to comply with U.S. export controls, would require a license to ship to China. In May, Nvidia said it would have recorded about $10.5 billion in H20 sales over two quarters if the government hadn’t made the license requirement.

Then, in July, Huang visited Trump in Washington and again tried to persuade him and other administration officials that it is in U.S. interests to ship Nvidia chips to China. The Trump administration said it would approve license requests for the H20, but that Nvidia would have to pay the U.S. government 15% of China sales.

Still, Nvidia’s China business isn’t yet back on track.

Earlier this month, Huang said at a financial conference that Nvidia is currently “100% out of China” and has no market share there. While Nvidia said it would receive licenses for the H20 chip, the company hasn’t revealed a newer chip for China based on the company’s current generation of Blackwell GPUs.

Quantum computing

Many of Nvidia’s announcements on Tuesday were partnerships intended to signal that the company works with a variety of U.S. companies.

Among those announcements was NVQLink, a new way to connect quantum chips to Nvidia’s GPUs.

The U.S. having a lead in quantum computing is important to policymakers because military officials are worried that a foreign adversary may be able to spy on military communications if it gets a working quantum computer first.

Nvidia officials said in a Monday call that its chips can be used to correct errors that pop up during quantum computing and advance the technology. Nvidia said that 17 different quantum computing startups would produce hardware compatible with NVQLink.

“Researchers will be able to do more than just error correction,” Huang said Tuesday. “They will also be able to orchestrate quantum devices and AI supercomputers to run quantum GPU applications.”