An independent expert believes that ransomware was used to assault Victoria's court system and that the attack was coordinated by Russian hackers.
According to a representative for Court Services Victoria (CSV), hackers gained access to a portion of the audio-visual archive of the court system. This would imply that hearing records including witness testimony from extremely private situations might have been obtained or pilfered.
To alert those whose court appearances were compromised by hackers, CSV is currently setting up a contact center for those who think they might have been impacted.
Though some hearings from before November may have also been impacted, the recordings came from hearings held between November 1 and December 21.
Before Christmas break, on December 21, staff members' laptops were locked and warnings stating "YOU HAVE BEEN PWND" were displayed on displays. This was the first indication that the attack had taken place.
Court employees received a message that linked them to a text file with threats from hackers on the publication of files taken from the court system. The message also included instructions on how to retrieve the files from the address on the dark web.
County Court cases have been most badly impacted, according to a Tuesday morning report from CSV.
All criminal and civil proceedings that were uploaded to the network between November 1 and December 21 might have been viewed, including at least two instances of past and present child sex abuse.
Recordings from the Criminal Division, the Practice Court, the Court of Appeal, and two regional proceedings in November may have been accessed, severely impacting the Supreme Court as well.
One October hearing from the Children's Court might have persisted on the network, but none of the sessions from November or December have been compromised.
Having reviewed the evidence of the attack, independent cyber security expert Robert Potter concluded that the court system was most likely the target of a Russian phishing attack that used Qilin, a commercial ransomware.
This intrusion not only demonstrates a risky and expanding practice among hackers, but it has also greatly increased the vulnerability of millions of US-based individuals. In certain cases, the situation is actually a lot worse than one may believe.
According to editor of Scamicide.com, Attorney Steven Weisman, this data breach is significantly dreadful for customers since threat actors were able to access the last four digits of social security numbers of the affected individuals. The first five numbers could easily be figured out by the hackers, as they are based on the owner’s residential address and the location where the card was issued.
“So if a criminal has the last four digits, the first three they can figure out easily, the second set they can get relatively easily, so it puts a lot of people in danger of identity theft,” explained Weisman.
Due to this particular issue of rather uncomplicated identification of social security numbers, the government had started randomizing the numbers in 2011.
Furthermore, these hackers are rather harmful. They introduced their malware in the software that Xfinity bought, rather than really hacking into Xfinity. According to Weisman, they are known as "supply chain" hacks, and their prevalence is significantly on the rise.
“They put their malware into the legitimate software. A company like Comcast gets some accounting software that they have no reason to think is anyway tainted and bam – the malware is in there and the personal information is stolen,” said Weisman.
In the recent times, these types of data breach are becoming more common. Customers are being asked by Xfinity to check their credit, change their passwords, and sign up for a multi-step verification process after the company announced the incident on its website. Additionally, people ought to routinely check their credit scores and freeze their credit.
Xfinity is a US-based telecommunications business segment, owned by Comcast Corporation, used in marketing consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. Xfinty, before being established in 2010 was operating under the common-label of Comcast, where the aforementioned services were marketed.