Ohio Historical past Connection (OHC) has confirmed that non-public info of 1000’s of people was stolen in a July ransomware assault and later posted on-line.
A nonprofit group, OHC manages the Ohio Historical past Middle, the first museum for Ohio’s historical past, in addition to 50 museums and websites throughout the state. The group is headquartered in Columbus, the place the Ohio Historical past Middle is positioned.
In a data breach discover, the group introduced that information on its inside servers was encrypted and stolen in a ransomware assault in July.
The attackers, OHC says, threatened to put up the stolen info on-line, demanding hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to be paid as ransom.
“OHC made a proposal to the cybercriminals to forestall the discharge of the info. On August 7, the cybercriminals rejected the supply. The non-public info of sure stakeholders could now be accessible to those that could also be on the lookout for it,” the group says.
The compromised info consists of the names, addresses, and Social Safety numbers of present and former staff (spanning between 2009 and 2023), together with the names and Social Safety numbers of third-party distributors offering providers to the group.
“In addition they could have gained entry to pictures of checks offered to OHC by some members and donors starting in 2020,” OHC says. No bank card info was compromised.
The group estimates that roughly 7,600 people might need been affected by the incident.
OHC says it has reported the assault to the related authorities and has retained an IT consulting agency to assist with the investigation.
The group additionally says it has moved most of its information to cloud-based providers and has applied new security programs to higher shield its information.
“Right now, there is no such thing as a proof that there was any use or tried use of the knowledge uncovered on this incident,” OHC says.
Nonetheless, personally identifiable info posted on-line typically finally ends up being utilized in numerous varieties of assaults, together with phishing.
information.killnetswitch has checked the leak web sites of a number of main ransomware teams and located that the LockBit group took credit score for the assault on OHC in late July.