The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) has now alerted the public to a recent data security breach. This significant incident occurred in February when a hacker was able to successfully phish one of the agency’s many employees. The state agency has stated that a total of 933 individuals were impacted in this particular security breach by the hacker. Of those people who were affected by this incident, 564 of them were confirmed to be residents of Illinois. HFS first became aware of this phishing campaign, which was specifically targeting its employees, around February 11, 2025, and launched an investigation. This breach unfortunately may have exposed customers’ private and very sensitive information to unauthorized access by the successful cybercriminals.
The attacker reportedly sent deceptive phishing emails to various HFS employees from another already compromised government email account for this attack. This clever social engineering tactic made the malicious emails look very trustworthy to the HFS employees who received them. As a direct result of these malicious actions, one HFS employee’s work emails and associated documents were unfortunately compromised. The sensitive personal information that was stolen from the agency ranges widely from Social Security numbers to driver’s licenses and state ID cards. Additionally, certain financial information related to child support, and also child support or Medicaid identification and case numbers were also exposed.
The agency has also confirmed that the birth dates of some individuals were part of the compromised data set as well.
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services has said that all of the identified affected individuals were officially notified. These important data breach notifications were all sent out by the state agency by the date of May 23rd, 2025, to alert the victims. The letters that were sent out to all of the victims clearly explained that as a result of the phishing attack on the employee. Their personal emails and various associated documents containing sensitive information were unfortunately compromised and exposed to an unauthorized third party. The state agency is taking this matter very seriously and has worked diligently to inform all of those who have been impacted.
In its official communication with all the victims of this breach, HFS has provided several important recommendations for them.
Potentially affected individuals can and should contact consumer reporting agencies to place a free fraud alert on their credit files. They can also choose to place a security freeze on their accounts, which provides an even higher level of protection against identity theft. The agency also advised them to contact the Federal Trade Commission to learn more about various fraud alerts and also available credit freezes. These important federal resources can help individuals to better protect themselves from any potential identity theft that may result from this data exposure.
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