Celebrity Law Firm Hacked, Attackers Threaten To Leak Stolen Data

By Tom Jowitt for Silicon UK
Tuesday, May 12, 2020

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The attackers are reported to be REvil or Sodinokibi hackers, who most notably crippled foreign exchange company Travelex with ransomware in January.

Desirable target

A security expert warned that law firms such as Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks are prime targets for hackers, and they need to bolster their cyber defences to cope with the threat.

“Law firms are increasingly becoming desirable targets of sophisticated cyber gangs,” explained Ilia Kolochenko, founder & CEO of web security company ImmuniWeb. “It is often much easier and faster to breach a mid-sized law firm to get ultra-confidential data compared to targeting its large clients directly, such as banks or celebrities as reportedly happened in this case.”

“In a highly competitive and now digitally-disrupted legal services market, few law firms are prioritising investment into holistic cyber resilience and defense, understand their attack surface, let alone conduct sufficient employee training,” said Kolochenko. “Furthermore, a considerable number of law firms have no incident detection and response capacities, often leaving them unable to detect an intrusion in a timely manner.”

“Worse, modern law firms have to deal with diversified digital flow of sensitive and privileged data on their mobile phone, laptops and office computers,” said Kolochenko. “Partners and clients exacerbate this convoluted landscape by uploading confidential documents to public cloud or file sharing websites.”

“Moreover, even if a data breach is detected, a not insignificant number of law firms would prefer to keep the incident as silent as possible to avoid disastrous reputational damage and acrimonious lawsuits from their clients,” he said. “Ultimately, law firms are a low hanging fruit for cybercriminals, enabling the latter to get their hands on crown jewels of major organisations without spending much effort.” Read Full Article