Every day newspaper Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that attackers behind a Could 2023 security breach have stolen the private and monetary info of 25,549 people.
The Inquirer is Philadelphia’s largest newspaper by circulation and has gained 20 Pulitzer Prizes because it was based in 1829. It is also the third-longest working every day newspaper in the US.
In Could 2023, The Inquirer disclosed that its methods had been breached in a cyberattack detected after its content material administration system went down unexpectedly. In response, the information organizations took some pc methods offline to comprise the security breach and employed Kroll forensics consultants to research the “anomalous exercise.”
The assault disrupted the publication of the print newspaper, with home-delivery subscribers requested to meet up with the most recent information utilizing the newspaper’s web site (inquirer.com), which remained unaffected.
“On Could 13, 2023, we grew to become conscious of suspicious exercise regarding sure inside info methods. In response, we started working with third-party cyber specialists to research the character and scope of the exercise,” The Inquirer mentioned in data breach notifications [PDF] despatched to impacted people.
“We decided that an unauthorized occasion gained entry to our methods and sure recordsdata had been considered and/or copied from our methods between Could 11, 2023, and Could 13, 2023.”
The investigation decided that the data uncovered throughout the breach included the impacted people’ names and different private identifiers together with monetary account numbers or credit score/debit card numbers (together with security code, entry code, password, or PIN for the accounts).
The newspaper suggested affected individuals to observe their accounts for identification theft and fraud makes an attempt and supplied 24 months of free Experian credit score monitoring and identification restoration companies.
Whereas The Inquirer did not reveal the character of the assault, the Cuba ransomware gang claimed duty one week after the incident.
The ransomware group claimed they stole monetary paperwork, correspondence with financial institution staff, stability sheets, tax paperwork, compensation, and supply code from Inquirer’s compromised servers.
Cuba additionally revealed the recordsdata on its darkish net leak website, indicating that the newspaper refused to pay a ransom and that the extortion try reached a useless finish.
Nonetheless, in the future after the recordsdata had been leaked, The Inquirer reported that the paperwork didn’t “seem to return from the newspaper.” Quickly after, the ransomware gang eliminated the Philadelphia Inquirer entry from its web site.
Because the FBI and CISA revealed in a joint security advisory, the Cuba ransomware gang collected over $60 million in ransoms till August 2022 after breaching greater than 100 victims worldwide.
A earlier FBI advisory from December 2021 additionally warned that Cuba operators had compromised at the least 49 U.S. important infrastructure organizations.
