HWL Ebsworth, a large Australian law firm with government clients, discovered they were hacked by Alphv/BlackCat on April 28. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recently confirmed that government files were stolen during the ransomware attack. According to HWL Ebsworth, the ransomware gang was only able to obtain files from a restricted area of the firm’s system, but their key document database remained protected.
Alphv/BlackCat published a portion of the stolen data to their leak site on June 9. This threat indicates that HWL Ebsworth has yet to submit a ransom payment. The law firm claims they are still investigating the extent of the data breach and will keep impacted customers in the loop. The OAIC announced that the Australian Federal Police, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the Taxation Office, and the Departments of Defence, Home Affairs, and Foreign Affairs were all impacted by the cyberattack. So far, Alphv/BlackCat has leaked about half of the 3.6 terabytes of data it stole from the firm in a show of force.
Read More: