The District of Columbia Board of Elections (DCBOE) says {that a} menace actor who breached an online server operated by the DataNet Methods internet hosting supplier in early October could have obtained entry to the private data of all registered voters.
Your entire voter roll that will have been uncovered comprises a variety of personally identifiable data (PII), together with driver’s license numbers, dates of start, partial social security numbers, and get in touch with data reminiscent of cellphone numbers and e mail addresses.
“Immediately, DCBOE realized the total voter roll MAY have been accessed within the breach of DataNet Methods’ database server,” the company tweeted.
“DataNet Methods couldn’t pinpoint if or when this file could have been accessed or what number of, if any, voter information have been accessed,” DCBOE stated in a Friday replace.
“Out of an abundance of warning, DCBOE will attain out to all registered voters. As well as, DCBOE will probably be participating with Mandiant, a cybersecurity consulting agency, to help with subsequent steps.”
Web site breach results in voter knowledge leak
On October 5, 2023, the DCBOE turned conscious of a breach involving a menace actor often called RansomVC, which claimed to have stolen 600,000 strains of U.S. voter knowledge, together with D.C. voter information.
In collaboration with MS-ISAC’s Pc Incident Response Workforce (CIRT), the company took down its web site upon discovering the assault. They changed it with a upkeep web page to include the state of affairs after figuring out the web site because the supply of the breach.
Additional investigations revealed the attackers gained entry to the knowledge by means of the net server of DataNet, the internet hosting supplier for Washington D.C.’s election authority. No DCBOE databases or servers have been straight compromised within the incident.
The DCBOE is investigating the breach with the help of exterior security specialists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS).
The efforts are centered on assessing the total extent of the breach, figuring out the vulnerabilities exploited in the course of the assault, and implementing measures to safeguard voter knowledge and programs.
Stolen knowledge up on the market
On their darkish net web site, RansomedVC claims the latest security breach led to the theft of greater than 600,000 strains of voter knowledge from america.
“We’ve efficiently penetrated the District of Columbia Board Of Elections and have acquired over 600k strains of USA Voters,” says the menace actor.
RansomedVC says the stolen knowledge comprises Washington D.C. voters’ private data, together with names, registration IDs, voter IDs, partial Social Safety numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of start, cellphone numbers, emails, and extra.
The knowledge remains to be out there on the market on the menace actor’s darkish net leak web site, though the value stays undisclosed.
Regardless of RansomedVC’s declare of the breach and their present try to promote the information on their leak web site, an nameless supply informed BleepingComputer was informed on October 3 that the stolen DCBOE database was first provided on the market on the BreachForums and Sinister.ly hacking boards by a consumer named pwncoder.
It’s price noting that each these posts have since been eliminated, and RansomedVC is the one menace actor nonetheless promoting the information.
BleepingComputer was additionally informed that the information was extracted from a stolen MSSQL database containing the main points of greater than 600,000 voters from the District of Columbia.
Current claims made by RansomedVC to have hacked into Sony’s servers and stolen over 260GB of information (with a 2MB leaked archive shared as proof) have been additionally challenged by one other menace actor often called MajorNelson, who launched a 2.4 GB archive of information on BreachForums, additionally allegedly taken from Sony’s programs.
Though the information they shared seems to be related to Sony, BleepingComputer couldn’t independently verify the authenticity of the claims made by both celebration.
