Greater Manchester Police faced data leak due to ransomware

The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) disclosed that they had fallen victim to a ransomware attack, resulting in the compromise of the personal information of some of their employees. The law enforcement agency stated that the attack occurred earlier this week and targeted one of their third-party suppliers. However, they have kept the name of the affected third-party entity.

This supplier allegedly provides services to GMP and several other organisations across the United Kingdom. Hence, the attack could inflict a more massive impact across the country and various organisations. Still, this agency does not believe the compromised data includes financial information about their employees.

 

The Greater Manchester Police said the attack will not affect stored financial information since the agency does not keep such data.

 

A representative of the Greater Manchester Police explained that they are aware of a ransomware attack affecting a third-party supplier of various UK organisations. The affected entity holds some information on its employees, but it’s not believed this data includes financial information. As of now, the agency has not yet disclosed the nature of the information that the actors could have acquired from the attack.

GMP is actively collaborating with the relevant entities to address and ensure that the affected individuals receive proper notification and assistance. Furthermore, they assured everyone that they would treat the breach with the utmost priority as part of a national-level criminal investigation, highlighting the severity of the situation.

This cybercriminal incident is one of the surging malicious campaigns that compromises the United Kingdom. A month ago, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) suffered a similar attack through a third-party supplier, exposing personally identifiable information, ranks, and locations of 10,000 police officers.

The attackers made some of the stolen data public, risking and jeopardising the safety of staff involved in crime-fighting operations.

There is a strong possibility that the attack on GMP and last month’s breach could have had the same threat actors, although investigations have yet to confirm this suspicion. Government-owned and private organisations should be vigilant since the country faces increasing cybercriminal campaigns.