Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth confirmed to local media that its network had been breached, after the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang began leaking data it claimed had been stolen from the firm.
HWL Ebsworth is one of Australia's largest law firms, with annual revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars, employing over 2,000 people and operating in nine offices across the country.
Last night, the ALPHV ransomware gang, also known as BlackCat, released 1.45 terabytes of data containing over a million documents allegedly stolen from the law firm's systems in April 2021. The cybercriminals are now threatening to leak more if the firm does not meet their demands.
A spokesperson for the company told the ABC that they would not give in to the threat actor's blackmail demands, even if it meant they and their customers would have to suffer the consequences of a potentially revealing data leak.
"We take our moral and ethical duties to the community very seriously. We believe we have a fundamental political duty not to encourage or be seen to condone in any way the criminal activity of extorting money by taking and threatening to publish other people's data," HWL Ebsworth told the ABC.
“The privacy and security of our customers’ and employees’ data remains of utmost importance. We recognize and understand the impact this may have and are communicating closely with our customers.”.
Because the law firm also had dealings with the public sector, there are concerns about leaking documents containing sensitive or confidential information regarding state matters.
Unfortunately, the documents leaked to BlackCat's website are easily searchable thanks to the group's indexed database, which allows visitors to filter search results by file name or file type.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
