Security News > 2022 > November > Ransomware gang targets Belgian municipality, hits police instead
The Ragnar Locker ransomware gang has published stolen data from what they thought was the municipality of Zwijndrecht, but turned out to be stolen from Zwijndrecht police, a local police unit in Antwerp, Belgium.
Belgian media outlets call this data leak one of the biggest of this kind that has impacted a public service in the country, exposing all data kept by Zwijndrecht police from 2006 until September 2022.
Zwijndrecht police responded to the local media coverage via a post on Facebook, downplaying the impact of the incident and saying that the hackers only accessed a part of the network where the police held administrative data.
The police say that the threat actors could only access data on the administrative network, therefore primarily affecting personnel.
Chief of police at Zwijndrecht, Marc Snels, told the VRT news network that the data leak resulted from human error, and they are now contacting all exposed individuals to inform them about the incident.
Dée's investigation of the data revealed telecom service subscriber metadata and SMS of people under covert police investigation.