Australia’s HWL Ebsworth law firm has issued a statement stating that its servers have been hacked and the personal data of its clients and some employees were accessed and siphoned by criminals.
The Blackcat ransomware gang posted a statement on its website reiterating the same, stating that they had siphoned approximately 4TB of company data, including employee CVs, ID card details, financial reports, account information, client documentation, credit card information, and a blueprint containing the network map of the entire HWL Ebsworth computer network.
Blackcat, also known as ALPHV, is one of the three ransomware gangs that seems to focus on large organizations operating in Australia. According to the analysis conducted by Palo Alto Networks, the notorious group has started targeting businesses that operate in nations supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, and this was reaffirmed by another cybersecurity firm named SOPHOS.
Security researchers from Sophos added in their statement that the gang of criminals was infiltrating networks by exploiting vulnerabilities created from unpatched software and firewalls. It immediately issued an alert to businesses to raise their defense line as per the needs of the current cyber landscape and can take the help of its experts in doing so.
Medibank, LJ Hooker, and Optus were among the other companies targeted by the ALPHV ransomware group. Therefore, the government led by Anthony Albanese warned all organizations in November last year to bolster their cybersecurity infrastructure before it was too late.
Blackcat usually demands a ransom of over $5 million on average, but HWL Ebsworth is not in the mood to entertain any such demands as it has an efficient data continuity plan in place.
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