It is reported that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is investigating a cyberattack involving human resources information stolen from its IT systems due to a breach. To eradicate poverty, fight inequality, and eliminate exclusion from society, UNDP, the UN's global development network, works in more than 170 countries and territories.
Donations are received from UN member states, private companies, and multilateral organizations.
According to a statement released by the organisation published Tuesday, there was a hack in the local IT infrastructure at UN City, Copenhagen, in late March. In a statement released by the UNDP on Tuesday, the organization said that a “data extortion actor” had stolen human resources and procurement information in UN City, Copenhagen and that the IT infrastructure was targeted.
In the statement, it was not disclosed what kind of data had been stolen from the organization that is the lead agency on international development for the UN.
According to notifications shared with affected parties and viewed by CyberScoop, hackers were able to access several servers and steal data that was significant in scope.
CyberScoop was informed that the notification information included in its notification may include data about former and current employees' family members, as well as information about contractors, including dates of birth, social security numbers, bank account information, passport details, and information about their bank accounts, bank accounts, and passports.
A UNDP entry on the 8Base ransomware gang's dark web data leak website has been added to its dark web data leak website since March 27, but the UN agency has yet to identify a specific threat group responsible for the attack. In their assertions, the attackers claim their operators were able to exfiltrate large amounts of sensitive information through the documents they were able to acquire during the breach.
They allegedly leaked a large amount of confidential information via a now-extinct link, including personal information, accounting data, certificates, employment contracts, confidentiality agreements, invoices, receipts, and much more, according to the reports. They emerged in March 2022, and they spiked their activity in June 2023 after they began attacking companies across a greater range of industry verticals and switched to double extortion to increase their revenue.
Data leaks were a major issue for the extortion group in May of 2023 when they claimed to be "honest and simple" pen testers that targeted "companies that neglected employees' and customers' privacy and the importance of their data." There have been over 350 victims listed on the site of this ransomware group so far, with some days announcing up to six victims at the same time.
In 8Base, a custom version of Phobos ransomware has been used, a malicious program that emerged in 2019 and has many code similarities to the Dharma ransomware family. Additionally, in January 2021, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) announced that over 100,000 employee records containing personally identifiable information (PII) were made available online after a data breach.
In July 2019, there was also a breach of UN networks in Geneva and Vienna, where a Sharepoint vulnerability allowed access to personnel records, health insurance data, and commercial contract data in an event, that a UN official described as a "major meltdown."
