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> The Legal Aid breach is, I’m told, a ransomware/extortion group (not mentioned in the notice). If it looks like the UK gov are going to pay, or pay via third party, this one will become a megathread. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-aid-agency-data-bre... -- https://cyberplace.social/@GossiTheDog/114533584686916433

Note Gossi's "If". There's no indication so far wrt possible payment.

Urahandystar · 1h ago

The UK government does not pay ransomware and advises private businesses not to also. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/section/respond-recover/ml-ransomwar...

moreati · 1h ago

I wasn't trying to suggest they wil. I emphasised Gossi's If because I missed it on my first read. I didn't want others making the same mistake.

No comments yet

celticninja · 2h ago

They are not going to pay anything I guarantee it. There is no randomware. They shut their services down before the attacker could deploy ransomware although the attacker likely accessed data.

alias_neo · 2h ago

> likely accessed data

There's nothing "likely" about it.

> On Friday 16 May we discovered the attack was more extensive than originally understood and that the group behind it had accessed a large amount of information relating to legal aid applicants.

> We believe the group has accessed and downloaded a significant amount of personal data from those who applied for legal aid through our digital service since 2010.

> This data may have included contact details and addresses of applicants, their dates of birth, national ID numbers, criminal history, employment status and financial data such as contribution amounts, debts and payments.

source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/legal-aid-agency-data-bre...

kmlx · 57m ago

just in case people are not aware what "legal aid" or what "Legal Aid Agency" are:

> Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial.

> The Legal Aid Agency is an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in the United Kingdom. It provides both civil and criminal legal aid and advice in England and Wales.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_Aid_Agency

egorfine · 3h ago

> she understood the news "will be shocking and upsetting for people".

And that's about it. No repercussions will take place.

tgv · 3h ago

Your comment is against the site rules on first sight, but it’s at the core of the problem: strong regulation, surveillance and punishment are sorely lacking.

celticninja · 2h ago

Who do you want to punish exactly?

aaronmdjones · 1h ago

Cases like this usually boil down to one of three things:

1) Someone left an unpatched server exposed to the Internet for months with a known critical vulnerability.

2) Someone uploaded the data to a world-readable S3 bucket or similar, or left it in an Internet-accessible database server with no authentication.

3) Someone with administrative credentials was using the password "password1!" or similar with no two-factor authentication.

In an ideal world (not the world we live in), in these cases, that someone would be prosecuted for gross negligence.

pjc50 · 1h ago

Perhaps. So you prosecute your £30k low rank administrative assistant in charge of the thing. All the other unionized low-paid civil servants immediately go "we didn't sign up for this liability" and refuse to touch anything that could be deemed computer administration. Government grinds to a halt.

Something similar happened to the British Museum a couple of years ago. Almost certainly an even worse pay/qualifications employer.

harvey9 · 8m ago

If someone puts a low rank admin assistant in charge then the boss needs prosecuting. It would be the public sector version of getting the boss's nephew to do it.

jaoane · 1h ago

You prosecute whoever set the system up. The same way you’d prosecute a surgeon for malpractice.

These are professionals. It’s their responsibility to build a solid, secure system. If they can’t or don’t want to then they should find another job.

egorfine · 1h ago

They are professionals. They cannot upgrade this particular windows server, because the software they're running on it requires visual basic 6.0 support. The vendor cannot provide any upgrade for their system, because certifying anything newer than Windows 2003 for this software is prohibitively expensive for the vendor. You cannot switch vendor due to obscure clauses in contract.

Real situation btw.

oaththrowaway · 1h ago

Then you're going to have to start paying entry level IT like surgeons. Nobody is going to take that kind of risk for $30K.

egorfine · 1h ago

Sounds about right.

So, shall we not protect people's data?

egorfine · 1h ago

It seems to me that 1) is the norm, not an exception in large enough corporations and especially government orgs.

Personally, I do not see any other way out of this other than somehow criminalizing running outdated software.

egorfine · 1h ago

Me personally I would like to set on fire the very people who begin to consider an upgrade to a major Windows version not earlier than it goes out of extended support.