Barcelona. Hackers have leaked some of the personal data stolen from a Spanish hospital a few weeks ago, relating to patients, healthcare workers and providers, with the intention of extorting money from the authorities.

The Ransom House criminal group has released between 3 and 4 gigabytes (GB) of data, a small fraction of the 4 terabytes (TB) that were stolen in a computer attack that began on March 5. Antoni Castells, medical director of the Barcelona clinic, said this Thursday.

indicated that are personal dataalthough at the moment there have been no claims about the disclosure of this private information.

The information was published on the “dark web”, which makes it difficult to find out where it is and to be able to eliminate it, said the head of the Main Department of Criminal Investigations of the Regional Police of Catalonia (Mossos d’Esquadra). ), Ramon Chacon.

The commissioner explained that agents through cyber patrols managed to block two servers abroad, but these actions did not prevent the release of this data.

In any case, the police will try hard to block new leaks again.

Chacon warned that no one should share the leaked information because it could be a crime. “It is as if we open the door of a house so that another may enter to steal,” he argued.

For his part, the director of the Cyber ​​Security Agency of Catalonia, Tomás Roy, emphasized that cybercriminals follow the usual procedure of publishing a small part of the data to demonstrate that they have it and to put pressure on the regional government of Catalonia to pay the ransom. asking €4.25 million ($4.6 million).

The forecast, he noted, is that more data will be released in two weeks, and the rest in a month or two.

Publishing sensitive data opens the door for cybercriminals to sell it to third parties and use it to commit fraud, so Roy asked to be wary of messages that could be sent to users with potential identity theft or misleading information.

However, according to Castells, the attack “did not compromise structured data for the healthcare practice, nor was patient data lost,” and the health center has already returned to normal.