The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley confirms a ransomware attack

The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley disclosed earlier this week that the February ransomware attack against their offices has resulted in a data leak. Over 42,000 individuals had their information exposed during the incident.

This California-based law firm offers services to individuals lacking sufficient funds to take cases. Based on reports, the data leak includes Social Security numbers and other personal data.

In addition, last February’s attack affected the firm’s clients and employees. The company said they have about 90 attorneys, social workers, volunteers, and staff while providing services to about 10,000 people yearly.

 

The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley said that they suffered a sophisticated attack.

 

The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley is a legal firm that has been providing service for about 50 years. They confirmed they are the subject of a recent ransomware attack from sophisticated operators.

The company’s operations quickly resumed when the offices reopened after Presidents Day, a holiday weekend. However, their security team later discovered that their servers suffered a breach.

The company immediately employed a third-party security team to investigate the unauthorised access and revealed that specific data within the Law Foundation’s system had been exposed to hackers. Hence, the breach compromised the personal data of about 40,000 individuals related to the law firm.

The confirmed information accessed includes Social Security numbers, medical records, financial data, financial account, payment card info, immigration numbers, passport identification, taxpayer numbers, dates of birth, and digital signatures.

The investigation into the ransomware incident ended on June 1. The law firm spent another month scouring for addresses and contact information for victims. They have also offered 12 months of identity protection services and theft insurance for every affected individual. Furthermore, the researchers confirmed that the compromised data included adults and minors.

Law firms have been an attractive target for ransomware operators since they store troves of data. Attackers could harvest such information since most companies do not have a substantial IT workforce. Therefore, law firms should invest more in cybersecurity defences to protect their data and avoid security breaches from threat actors.