The law firm Jones Day has fallen victim to a ransomware attack and the hackers are publishing the stolen data. The source could be the Accelion data breach. Confidential documents on Donald Trump’s legal battle to overturn the outcome of the recent US presidential election have also allegedly ended up on the Dark Web.
According to DataBreaches.net, the source of the leak is Jones Day, one of the largest international law firms with annual revenues of more than $2 billion, which has offices around the world and represents numerous public figures including the former US president.
Although the news has been published in major US publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the law firm has neither confirmed nor denied the cyber-attack at this time, and no official statement regarding service interruptions or data breach notices has been published on the Jones Day website.
The attack was allegedly carried out by a group of hackers known to spread the Clop ransomware, but in this case, they did not encrypt the files on the law firm’s systems, but merely made a copy and demanded a ransom from Jones Day.
According to computer security experts, the law firm did not give in to the blackmail and, as a result, the cyber criminals decided to “put the pressure on” by posting a 100 GB of data on the Dark Web.
This includes communications, documents and confidential information relating to the legal proceedings of the firm’s lawyers. The possibility cannot be ruled out, therefore, that they also contain information on the legal action taken by Donald Trump in recent months to salvage his election campaign.
The details of how the hackers got hold of the data are not yet certain. While Clop’s cyber criminals claim to have obtained the information directly from Jones Day’s systems, the company points to an earlier data breach involving Accelion’s FTA file-sharing system.
The attack, which took place in December 2020, exploited a zero-day vulnerability in the system, which is also used by Jones Day.
SOURCE: FEDERPRIVACY