Security News > 2024 > March > Tech trade union confirms cyberattack behind IT, email outage

In what was originally being called a serious IT outage at the end of last week, the union confirmed to The Register today that the incident is now being treated as an attack, the full extent of which is still being assessed.

The CWU told us on March 22 that its email services weren't working and that it has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts who have been on site since 0900 UTC on March 21.

The Register contacted the CWU after being informed by a purported union insider who made various claims about the state of its outage last week, including that finance, payroll, and membership information was compromised by a cyberattack.

"The Communications Workers Union has made us aware of an incident and we are assessing the information provided," said a spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office.

The Register spoke to a handful of CWU regional secretaries late last week - leaders of the union's regional outposts - and all of those who responded said they had not been made aware of any cybersecurity or data security incident.

It's also been claimed by a CWU source that the cyberattack at the union corrupted its data backups too, which, if correct, would be a damaging blow to its recovery protocol, should it need to be engaged.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/cwu_security_incident/