Hackers hoping for 'some dark state secret' in my medication records will be disappointed: PM Lee

SINGAPORE — Cyberattackers who repeatedly targeted data on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s outpatient medication will be disappointed for the information is “nothing alarming”, Mr Lee said in a Facebook post shortly after the Government announced on Friday (July 20) that Singapore had been hit with its most serious cyberattack yet.

“I don’t know what the attackers were hoping to find. Perhaps they were hunting for some dark state secret, or at least something to embarrass me. If so, they would have been disappointed. My medication data is not something I would ordinarily tell people about, but there is nothing alarming in it,” Mr Lee wrote on Facebook.

Sophisticated cyberattackers broke into public healthcare cluster SingHealth's IT systems to steal the medical data of 1.5 million patients including Mr Lee, and the unusual activity was detected by the Health Ministry’s IT arm on July 4.

Health Minister Gan Kim Yong and Minister for Communications and Information S Iswaran chaired a press conference to make the announcement, and Mr Gan apologised for the data breach and said affected patients would be informed from Friday.

The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted Mr Lee’s personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines.

Mr Lee said he had opted in when SingHealth digitised its medical records, although he had the option to keep his records in hard copy for security reasons. “Going digital would enable my doctors to treat me more effectively and in a timely manner. I was confident that SingHealth would do their best to protect my patient information, just as it did for all their other patients in the database,” he said.

“Of course, I also knew that the database would be attacked, and there was a risk that one day despite our best efforts it might be compromised. Unfortunately that has now happened.”

Mr Lee has ordered the Cyber Security Agency and the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG) to work together with the Ministry of Health to tighten up their defences and processes across the board.

Maintaining Singapore’s cyber defences will be a ceaseless effort, said Mr Lee.

“Those trying to break into our data systems are extremely skilled and determined. They have huge resources, and never give up trying. Government systems come under attack thousands of times a day. Our goal has to be to prevent every single one of these attacks from succeeding. If we discover a breach, we must promptly put it right, improve our systems, and inform the people affected,” he wrote.

“This is what we are doing in this case. We cannot go back to paper records and files. We have to go forward, to build a secure and smart nation.”

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