Ransomware steals data from city of Oakland (opens in a new tab) According to reports, last month’s attack has begun to reach the dark web.
The Play ransomware threat actor has updated its leaked website with data stolen from New York City during a ransomware attack in mid-February, BleepingComptuer reported.
So far, the group has leaked a total of 10 GB of data divided into multiple RAR archives. Whether the group will release more remains to be seen, but the leaked cache reportedly contains a wealth of sensitive employee information, enough for threat actors to carry out identity theft campaigns.
Sensitive Data Leakage
“Private and personally confidential data, financial information. ID cards, passports, employee full information, information on human rights violations. Partial release currently compressed 10gb,” says the threat actor’s website.
Auckland Council has also responded to the latest developments, saying it is closely monitoring the situation and will notify affected individuals accordingly:
“While the investigation into the scope of the incident affecting the City of Oakland remains ongoing, we recently discovered that an unauthorized third party obtained certain documents from our network and intends to release the information publicly,” the city’s statement said. wrote in.
“We are cooperating with third-party experts and law enforcement on this matter and actively monitor claims by unauthorized third parties to investigate their validity. If we determine that the personal information of any individuals was involved, we will notify those individuals in accordance with applicable law “
The city was forced to take its IT systems offline during the attack, but emergency services remained operational.
In a brief Twitter post at the time, the city said its core services were not affected, but customers should expect delays in other services.
Public sector organizations are popular targets for ransomware operators, so the attack on the city of Oakland came as no surprise.
In early January 2023, cybersecurity specialist Emsisoft released a report stating that more than 200 large public sector organizations in the United States were affected by ransomware last year. In addition to governments, threat actors are also attacking the education and healthcare industries. In about half of the detected incidents, threat actors stole sensitive data.
pass: Beep computer (opens in a new tab)
