Last week, hackers from Rex Mundi, a group known for stealing data from various companies and then extorting it, announced the breach of the systems of Belgian hosting company AlfaNet. On Friday night, the extortionists published the names of 12,000 of the company's customers.
Company representatives have not made public statements about the incident. According to a message posted by the hackers on Friday alongside the names of the customers, the representatives have not even responded to the hackers' emails.
Interestingly, the 24-hour deadline has passed, but they have not released any other customer data as they threatened.
One possible scenario is that the company has agreed to pay the amount in order to keep its customer data from ending up online. If that's the case, it's likely that hackers have gained deep access to the company's systems.
There is also the possibility that Rex Mundi did not gain access to sensitive information and that these were simply empty threats.
In the past, many organizations have admitted that Rex Mundi had breached their systems. However, there are also some disputed cases.
For example, in the case of Belgian telecommunications company Numericable, the company denied that hackers had gained access to customer information. Shortly after, the criminals published a file that appeared to contain contact information for about 6,000 people.
In the summer of 2013, Rex Mundi claimed to have hacked the systems of the Belgian employment agency Habeas. It then tried to blackmail the company, but they released a message admitting that most of the data they downloaded from Habeas’ servers was “junk.”.
