On March 24, BlackCat emailed Noteboom – The Law Firm, a Texas personal injury law firm. The email, shared with DataBreaches by BlackCat, appeared to be sent from the firm’s own systems administrator, Paul Khong. With some light editing by DataBreaches to correct some typos, it read:
This is [ALPHV] aka BlackCat Ransomware Team. We are here to inform you about data breach which took place at your network on March 24 2023.
As a result of this breach our team had downloaded over 400Gb of sensitive data. Also we have encrypted all your servers and data. We have infiltrated your network and stayed there for 7 days (it was enough to study your documentation and gain access to your files and services)
BlackCat claimed that they had exfiltrated sensitive data such as NDAs, documents from open cases, medical records involved in litigation, and employees’ sensitive data. And they commented that they were aware that Noteboom had detected their intrusion:
It is worth noting that we have met some resistance from your side. Your network administrators found our activity in your network and tried to stop us for several days. Unfortunately for your company, the network administrator’s qualification was not enough to prevent our ransomware attack and prevent data leak.
The remainder of the email was the usual type of explanation as to why the victim should contact them and pay.
On March 27th, BlackCat contacted Noteboom again with the same email. They reportedly received no reply and on April 4, they sent Noteboom yet another copy of the email with a link to a private onion URL and a message:
[redacted onion link]
You have 24 hours left to contact us.
This link is private but it becomes public.
Presumably, there was no contact, because BlackCat openly added Noteboom to their leak site today. At this point, BlackCat has not leaked any of the firm’s data, but they inform DataBreaches that they will give Noteboom another two weeks to respond, after which the data will be leaked.
When asked, BlackCat’s spokesperson informed DataBreaches that the ransom demand was $1,750,000.00, and that Noteboom has not responded to them at all.
DataBreaches emailed inquiries to Noteboom yesterday and earlier today, but no replies have been received.
This post will be updated if more details become available.