Hackers have a new kind of business in their sights. And if they look at lawyers, it’s not by chance!
Computer hackers have continued to professionalize in recent years if we are to believe the conclusions of ANSSI. And what we notice is that cybercriminals are improving their techniques and that they are attacking an increasingly large panel of victims.
France and the United Kingdom on alert
After infrastructure, political symbols or hospitals, hackers have a new playground: law firms. This is revealed by reports that have just been published by the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and by the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI), the cyber surveillance agencies of France and the United Kingdom.
These companies are victims, like many, of classic ransomware attacks. However, they bear the full brunt of a problem much more specific to their sector: that of the recruitment of mercenary pirates by opposing parties, in order to steal sensitive information from them.
India, a big provider of hackers
The NCSC thus explains that it has observed an increase in the recruitment of “hackers for hire” used “ to take advantage in business transactions or legal disputes “. The ANSSI notes for its part that ” mercenaries with cyber offensive capabilities dramatically increased operations against law firms in North America, Europe and elsewhere in the world.
And the report of the French agency is precise enough to locate one of the nerve centers of this push: India. The ANSSI quotes a report by Reuters dated 2022 in which we could read that Indian hackers had targeted nearly a thousand lawyers and 108 firms across the planet for a year, developing a business model based on the theft of legal documents for clients. Here is a new threat that some may not have seen coming!
Source : Reuters
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