I had forgot how big Capita are. It's like 492304932 different business units. Shodan Safari is like looking into the sun.
It looks like some of the plc centrally use Okta for authentication.. I hope they enabled Number Verification.
Capita, one of the UK’s biggest outsourcers, is investigating an incident with its IT systems which has prevented staff from logging in.Employees at the company, which handles important government contracts including for the NHS, have been denied access since before 7am.They have been told in round robin phone messages “not to attempt access via VPN or submit password recovery requests”.
The Times reporter is being verbally briefed as #Capita still don't have email (almost 10 hours in).
They're told: 'There appears to be no risk to personal data processed by the business. The outage seems to be is hitting Office365 programmes including Outlook, Excel and Teams rather than client systems...'
Financial Times have a new article up about #Capita, saying two people familiar with the matter say cyber incident cannot be ruled out.
Curiously all the media articles about it this evening talk about the IT incident in the past tense - but it is still ongoing, it hasn't been resolved.
https://www.ft.com/content/00f9591f-e07a-4339-ba3e-413818602515
Verbal update from #Capita - they’re still restoring internal service, “there is no evidence that any data has been compromised."
They won’t discuss what is happening.
The Times have a report up saying #Capita NHS services staff are working using WhatsApp and Google Drive, rather than approved Microsoft tooling.
Massively concerned by lack of transparency, going to start digging into this tomorrow with officials. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/capita-dogged-by-it-problem-for-three-days-wthl2zp5v
#Capita are listed on Black Basta ransomware portal as a victim.
They posted various screenshots of access to personal data (e.g. passport scans), security vetting, nuclear BACS payment details, architecture diagrams, school reports etc - Capita customer data.
http://stniiomyjliimcgkvdszvgen3eaaoz55hreqqx6o77yvmpwt7gklffqd.onion/?id=CAPITA
#Capita's breach is also being sold on the portal, you can pay cryptocurrency for "Remote exclusive server with data of "CAPITA""
Black Basta focus on data exfiltration, traditionally using rclone. Prior reading: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/black-basta-threat-profile.pdf
I took a look at Capita’s ransomware incident, and look at what they’ve told the media and customers versus the reality of what has happened.
Black Basta ransomware group extorts Capita with stolen customer data, Capita fumble response.
There’s an interesting piece in The Times today, where the CEO of Capita declares Capita’s response to the hack “will go down as a case history for how to deal with a sophisticated cyberattack”…
The Times website has a report this evening about the Black Basta breach of Capita. Capita still deny there is any evidence of data being compromised.. in a story that even includes details of Capita’s office floor plans leaking. #ransomware
The Record reports #Capita is "...understood to be working to establish whether the data is authentic or if the extortion group had cobbled it together from other sources."
Maybe the source is cobbled together from Capita Business Services... or Capita Nuclear. Or one of the other Capita business units in the #BlackBasta portal. https://therecord.media/capita-investigates-authenticity-data-leak
After two weeks of telling press and customers privately my blog was inaccurate, suggesting the leaked data was public domain, denying it was ransomware etc.. #Capita have now admitted a data breach.
They’re still not giving full story or admitting Black Basta, more to come on how to defend your org.
I've written a post on the #Capita ransomware breach, which potentially has national security implications in the UK.
- Includes technical steps orgs can take to protect themselves from a similar situation
- A call to arms on a change in how organisations handle ransomware incidents, makes case for transparency
It's a month since Russian hackers first got into #Capita, on March 22nd.
Black Basta also list Capita as CAPITA_2, just noticed - two listings.
Really interesting piece in The Times, where Capita claim that they informed clients they were hacked at 11am on Friday 31st March (the first day) and kept them briefed.
Anybody agree or disagree this was true? https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/silence-is-deafening-after-cyberattack-on-capita-dgns935gz
Error messages flashed up as staff at Capita tried to log into their accounts on Friday, March 31. Frustrated workers were advised not to submit password reset requests to swamped technology teams as the outsourcer got to grips with what was going on. In a preliminary statement that morning, dictat
BBC report on the Pension Regulator concerns about the data breach at #Capita.
Capita administer pensions for around 4 million people. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65443841
#Capita were still listed unindexed on Black Basta's portal, so I entered a chat and asked Black Basta if they hacked Capita.
Black Basta erased the chat history, and removed CAPITA and CAPITA_2 from their portal just now. Previously, Capita declined to comment about communicating with Black Basta to @BleepingComputer
The Sunday Times newspaper has a big feature about ransomware today, featuring me, @ciaranmartin, @brett
I just want to call out this bit about Capita and say their failure to acknowledge the fact they lost security vetting data impacts real people, at a scale way bigger than one person - I think it is ethically poor that Capita just deny stuff that matters.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-hackers-are-recruiting-on-the-dark-web-mpl2hvsss
However, the company could use the cyber attack to its advantage, he added.
“If Capita is smart it’ll come out of this saying we’ve more experience of handling this than anybody else, you should be using us, because we know what we’re doing and we employ leading experts in this field,” Rawlinson said.
Lmao, that’s one take.
https://www.ft.com/content/20aa4844-2ebe-44dc-9550-7d950150e784
Capita recently reported a cyber incident involving hackers targeting some of its computer servers – potentially impacting several of the cross-sector businesses it serves. We use Capita’s technology platform (Hartlink) to support our in-house pension administration processes and have been liaising closely with the company over the course of its forensic investigations.
One month ago Capita’s CEO claimed their response to the attack would “go down as a case history for how to deal with a sophisticated cyber attack” - while denying any data exfiltration, and blaming the incident on a single staff member clicking a link (that bit was behind a Times paywall).
I suspect Capita’s board should be asking if somebody opening a file is the real cause of the issue - or if it’s a cascading failure to manage properly and transparently from the top down.
USS have today started notifying just under half a million people that #Capita lost their data to Black Basta. USS didn’t include nation insurance numbers taken.. which enables fraud.
Due to legal requirements in the UK, every pension holder in every impacted pension scheme will need to be notified individually - according to media reports, this is up to 350 pension schemes. So this may become the biggest data breach disclosure ever in the UK.
Colchester City Council has been informed they have a data breach by #Capita. Capita are telling them the data has now been “secured”. Colchester City Council say they have “extreme disappointment with Capita”. https://www.colchester.gov.uk/info/cbc-article/?id=KA-04376
Update: it turns out this was related to the S3 bucket incident.
Btw, if anybody wonders if I’m human and feel sorry for the Capita cybersecurity staff dealing with this - absolutely. I feel awful for them. I’ve always said the technical containment and investigation sounds good.
I suspect there have been people there tearing their hair out. I doubt the decisions to pretend leaked data was public domain, not admit ransomware, say 0.1% of server estate etc came from the immediate responding teams.
Diageo pension fund says their data has been compromised in #Capita breach.
“During the course of April, Capita informed us that they had taken steps to isolate and contain the incident whilst they continued to investigate it. However, on 3 May, Capita told us that it is likely a file containing your data had been compromised.”
Lots of new details in Times piece about the cybersecurity woes engulfing Capita. Features my Mastodon thread about the files on #Capita’s own website.
New victims include staff at PWC, Unilever and The Cabinet Office. 11 councils are also investigating the open bucket issue.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0513205a-f718-11ed-a712-8f47f8e830cf?shareToken=e595f233220e2a4532500771d0175ea9
Non-paywall version if you hit it: https://archive.ph/2023.05.20-234130/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/capita-under-fire-after-confidential-files-published-online-7cjh2jj59
If you’re wondering why specifically pension companies are disclosing, the Pension Regulator has reminded both them and Capita that there are clear and enforceable legal obligations for pensions.
The #Capita breach involves other data, including UK gov data, which has not been disclosed.
Attached: 2 images Email just received from #USS about #Capita data breach. Fyi @[email protected]
@GossiTheDog I keep checking Capita's news page to see whether they've started doing daily updates.
"Today we informed our client X that Y# customer records were stolen during incident [1/2], consisting of personal information A, B, C, D and E."
Not today though. Maybe tomorrow... 😕
The ICO could also do better. Disappointing approach by lots of different entities & people.
@GossiTheDog
I'm thinking about how this could've been spotted sooner.
It's probably not realistic to rely purely on end-user training. So perhaps this should be a feature of data protection systems:
"This email contains a link to a file which is accessible to the general public. This may be a GDPR breach, or a sign of insecure file storage. This has been flagged with the company DPO."
Or unauthenticated download links could just be blocked.
Is this a feature of any email systems already?
Perhaps it's finally time to insource rather than outsource 🤔
@rhys @GossiTheDog
The page the email links to says they potentially were.
Bloody USS. I know none of us are ever really expected to retire and the pension's only a pale shadow of what it was and all that, but even so it would be a kind and responsible gesture if they avoided losing what there is.
Capita recently reported a cyber incident involving hackers targeting some of its computer servers – potentially impacting several of the cross-sector businesses it serves. We use Capita’s technology platform (Hartlink) to support our in-house pension administration processes and have been liaising closely with the company over the course of its forensic investigations.
@GossiTheDog
Yup, they sent a supershort email linking to https://www.uss.co.uk/news-and-views/latest-news/2023/05/05122023_important-information-about-capitas-cyber-incident
Recommends no action afaict.
Capita recently reported a cyber incident involving hackers targeting some of its computer servers – potentially impacting several of the cross-sector businesses it serves. We use Capita’s technology platform (Hartlink) to support our in-house pension administration processes and have been liaising closely with the company over the course of its forensic investigations.
I have had the USS email. I know someone who got a different version where they do state the data that was exposed/swiped. It included this:
While it has been confirmed that USS member data held on Hartlink has not been compromised, we have been informed that regrettably details of USS members were held on the Capita servers accessed by the hackers. The information potentially accessed includes:
Their title, initial(s), and name; their date of birth; their National Insurance number; their USS member number
If your environment can be compromised by a single user clicking on a link or opening a file...
... then you've not given sufficient consideration towards insider threats.
@GossiTheDog me, after dropping the entire carton of eggs on the floor, "the eggs may have been lost"
When can I expect my PR job?
Me too. I’m a bit annoyed by how Capita have handled this. Or not, as the case may be.
“will go down as a case history for how to deal with a sophisticated cyberattack”
Capita CEO, in early April.
Well, to be fair I don’t know what happened from a technical perspective re. initial access and exfil. Maybe their SOC detected it reasonably quickly and acted on it before more damage could be done. My expectations are they probably did a shit job, which might be harsh.
The handling of the breach in every sense that we do know about has been one step above complete denial. Very poor. A case study in what not to do in my opinion.
They have friends in high places and are too big to fail, so maybe the case will prove to be ‘who gives a shit what data Capita leak?’.
@GossiTheDog USS members starting to receive notification this morning:
“Our technology partner, Capita, has been the target of a cyber attack, and some of the data it holds on its servers for USS has been compromised. We're confident that the robust processes we have in place ensure there is no risk of a third party accessing your pension without your permission. You can find more details on our website. We're sorry for any distress or inconvenience this issue causes you.”