British watchdog Ofcom latest victim of MOVEit attack
Confidential and employee data was stolen during the data breach
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British television watchdog Ofcom is the latest victim of a supply chain attack against document transfer service MOVEit.
The cyber attack against MOVEit saw Russian ransomware gang Clop exploit a critical zero-day vulnerability in the company’s infrastructure. This vulnerability allowed Clop to access the networks of companies that use MOVEit, meaning they were able to access and steal their data.
During the cyber attack against Ofcom, confidential data on the companies regulated by the organization as well as the personal information of 412 employees was stolen by the Russian ransomware gang. No Ofcom systems were impacted by the attack.
The television watchdog says it takes the “security of commercially confidential and sensitive personal information provided to Ofcom” extremely seriously. Once the cyber attack was discovered, Ofcom said it took “immediate action to prevent further use of the MOVEit service”, as well as implementing appropriate security measures to prevent further breach of its data.
The organization also said it “swiftly alerted” all Ofcom-regulated companies affected by the attack, as well as offering support to employees impacted by the data breach.
Ofcom is the latest in a range of companies impacted by the MOVEit data breach. Others affected include Health Service Ireland (HSE) and Zellis, a payroll provider for companies including health and beauty retailer Boots and the British Broadcasting Company.
Following the cyber attack on Zellis on June 5, Clop made a post via the dark web that urged all those affected by the breach to contact the gang by June 14 or their private information will be posted online.
Only employees who work for local or national government or the police services may be safe from this threat, with Clop telling these employees to “not worry”. They continued, saying “we erased your data you do not need to contact us. We have no interest to expose [sic] such information”. The legitimacy of this statement has been called into question, however.
