Multiple branches of the insurance company AXA in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong were hit by an Avaddon ransomware infection. The operators of this variant of malware posted an update on their website stating that they had stolen more than 3TB of confidential information from the insurance firm.
In addition to the ransomware infection, AXA’s websites globally appear to be affected by a denial of service (DoS) attack that has been consistently disrupting since the weekend. The hackers’ report mentions that the leak includes all kinds of confidential data.
While “a working group with external forensic experts is investigating the incident.” The firm assured that, after learning about the problem, regulators and business partners were appropriately informed. Axa also explained that if “sensitive data has been affected, the necessary measures will be taken to notify and support all those affected.”
And look how things are, the attack came just ten days after the insurer announced that it was going to stop issuing cybersecurity policies in France that cover ransomware extortion payments, a move unprecedented in the industry. According to the cybersecurity company Emsisoft, the total losses caused by this extortion software rose to 5.5 billion dollars in the country last year.
What information was filtered according to the hackers to the AXA attack
The hackers revealed that the company has ten days to negotiate a ransom payment; otherwise all compromised data will be leaked. The hackers’ announcement also mentions that the exposed information includes:
▸Customer complaints
▸Client medical reports
▸Customer payments
▸Scanned bank documents
▸Material restricted to hospitals and doctors
▸Identification documents
Without a doubt, a serious problem not only for the company but more so for users since their data is what was exposed and that is why you cannot skimp when it comes to taking security measures.
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