Cybersecurity Insiders has learnt that Clop ransomware gang operating from Russia accessed the servers of the City of Toronto to grab metadata of over 35k citizens. Their plan could be to later dump the data on the dark web and make money.
However, for some reason or because of a strict online vigil from Ukraine’s law enforcement agency, they did not post the details or dropped the plan to do for reasons best known to them.
Going deep into the details, in January 2021, cyber criminals from CLOP ransomware group got access to sensitive data related to the population of Toronto through a ZERO Day vulnerability exhibited in the Accellion file transfer system.
As soon as the cyber attack details were revealed in the prima facie launched by the IT staff of Toronto, they believed the city could receive a massive ransom request at any moment.
However, the development did not take place as per the expectation of the staff members.
Ontario’s Information Commissioner’s Office took a note of the incident and concluded that the year 2022 will witness a slew of attacks on public agencies- mostly those serving health sector.
Note- Accessed data by Clop Ransomware attack includes details related to over 30k property tax payers, info related to over 400 people who are fully vaccinated, patient data of over 100 people being treated by Toronto’s Paramedics, 3000 individuals related data linked to Toronto’s Public Health and their Corona test results and details of few flyers who visited America in Christmas 2020.
