{"id":52419,"date":"2023-06-20T13:26:39","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T13:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/34736\/Data-Leak-At-Law-Firm-Sets-Australias-Elites-Scrambling.html"},"modified":"2023-06-20T13:26:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T13:26:39","slug":"data-leak-at-law-firm-sets-australias-elites-scrambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/data-leak-at-law-firm-sets-australias-elites-scrambling\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Leak At Law Firm Sets Australia’s Elites Scrambling"},"content":{"rendered":"

An infosec incident at a major Australian law firm has sparked fear among the nation’s governments, banks and businesses \u2013 and a free speech debate.<\/p>\n

The firm, HWL Ebsworth, has acknowledged<\/a> that on April 28, “we became aware that a threat actor identified as ALPHV\/BlackCat made a post on a dark web forum claiming to have exfiltrated data from HWL Ebsworth.”<\/p>\n

The lawyers therefore hired investigators, who confirmed that “the threat actor had accessed and exfiltrated certain information on a confined part of the firm’s system, but not on our core document management system.” The investigation reportedly<\/a> revealed that over four terabytes of info leaked, including documents describing clients and staff. Reports also detail negotiations between the firm and ALPHV\/BlackCat over ways to keep the incident quiet.<\/p>\n

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Australia’s regulator responsible for data breach reporting is among those impacted by the leak<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The attackers later published some of the stolen data on the dark web.<\/p>\n

Which is where things get interesting. HWL Ebsworth is the kind of big-end-of-town law firm that attracts governments and large corporates as clients. Those clients are now scrambling to understand if their data has leaked.<\/p>\n