Alexander Martin reports:
Sensitive information about women and girls who have survived domestic abuse is now expected to be exposed through a data extortion incident impacting the British government’s Legal Aid Agency, potentially revealing their locations to abusers and in some cases requiring them to move homes.
The government confirmed the incident on Monday, saying everyone who applied for aid using the service’s online platform since 2010 is believed to be affected.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said they now believed it was a question of “when, not if” the compromised data is published online — a position aligning with the British government’s commitment to never make an extortion payment to cybercriminals.
Read more at The Record.
The government began sending out letters to law firms at the beginning of the month, but it was only within this past week that the scope of the breach and what the hackers acquired has been revealed.