A group of cyber hackers who claim to be responsible for the attack on the Legal Aid Agency has threatened to publish the data gathered through the cyber attack unless one of their members is ‘freed’.
First reported in The Times, the group, which calls itself the ShinyHunters, has publicly claimed credit for the attack in April and demanded about £1.5m in bitcoin from the Ministry of Justice as a ransom. The MoJ has said the public sector does not pay cybercriminals and will soon be prevented from doing so by law.
A subsequent threat was made on encrypted messaging app Telegram demanding the MoJ ‘freed’ an individual, who The Times has not yet named, by 6am on Monday. Failure to do so would result in the group leaking ‘all the GitHub repositories and the Legal Aid Agency Ministry of Justice database.’
Following the passing of the deadline, no data appears to have published and it has not been possible to verify the legitimacy of the Telegram posts.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the Law Society Gazette
“We will not negotiate with criminals or engage with their ransom demands. It is illegal to share this data and anyone who does so could be sent to prison.”
The attack on the Legal Aid Agency has rendered the agency’s online portal unusable. It has been offline since 16th May with the Ministry of Justice now acknowledging the data breach could affect users as far as 2007, all the way through the date the systems were taken offline. The frequently asked questions page has also been updated with new information.
