Security News > 2022 > July > Culture shock: Ransomware gang sacks arts orgs' email lists

A ransomware gang has not only taken down WordFly, a mailing list provider for top arts organizations among others, but also siphoned data belonging to the US-based Smithsonian, Canada's Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

In an update about the ongoing outage, WordFly exec Kirk Bentley said the outfit's engineering team discovered a network disruption on July 10.

"The incident was propagated by a bad actor who conducted a ransomware attack on WordFly, resulting in the encryption of the WordFly application," he wrote in a support note.

During said attack, miscreants stole customers' email addresses and "Other data" used by those organizations to communicate with their fans via WordFly.

In a similar alert, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra warned that personal information including names, email addresses, TSO patron ID and information about TSO accounts may have been compromised.

In the meantime, as WordFly's email service remains down, the orchestra has "Temporarily partnered" with Mailchimp to send its communications to patrons.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/07/26/wordfly_ransomware_attack/