The group has set a June 9 deadline for the payment of an undetermined ransom. According to the blog, "all available data will be published" if the company does not collaborate with the cybercriminals before then.
Kyocera AVX’s clients involves military, industrial and automotive industries, for whom the company manufactures electronic products. It was established in the 1970s, and since 1990, it has been a part of Kyocera, a Japanese electronics business best known for its printers. Over 10,000 individuals are employed by it globally.
On May 26th, security researchers revealed that selected data of the company has been leaked and posted to LockBit’s dark web victim blog.
Apparently, the company’s data was breached following a cyberattack that took place on Fujitsu last year. The attack might have been the reason why LockBit was able to launch a supply chain attack on Kyocera AVX, and other companies that are partnered with Fujitsu via cyber or other social engineering attacks.
According to a Financial Times report, Fujitsu confirmed the attacks in December following a heads-up given by police agency of a potential intrusion. The intrusion further gave outsiders access to emails sent through an email system powered by Fujitsu.
It was later revealed that at least ten Japan-based companies, along with Kyocera AVX were victims of the attack.
Ransomware gang LockBit, which is assumed to have originated in Russia has been on news highlights pertaining to its interest on targeting organizations based in US and allied countries.
According to a report by security firm Malwarebytes, 126 victims have been posted by the ransomware gang in February alone.
This year, the gang targeted the UK Royal Mail, demanding ransom of $80 million in bitcoin. When the business refused to pay up, labeling the demands "ridiculous," the gang retaliated by sharing the information along with copies of the conversations between LockBit and Royal Mail's officials.
Later, it stole client information from WH Smith, a high-end street retailer in the UK. The hacker used current and previous employees' personal information. Since then, there has been no information indicating whether the business has paid the ransom.
In its recent case, this month, an individual named Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev who claims to have been involved with LockBit, has a bounty of $10 million on his head placed by the FBI. With connections to both the Hive and Babuk organizations, Matveev is believed to be a major participant in the Russian ransomware ecosystem.
This data of more than 3.1 million patients in the US has apparently been shared with advertisers and social media giants like Facebook, Google, and TikTok.
In a notice published on the company’s website, it addressed the case, admitting to having exposed patient data from as far back as October 2019 by the tracking technologies it had been utilizing.
The telehealth startup came to light in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, after the online-only virtual health services came into culture due to lockdown, disclosing the security lapse in its system at the time.
In a filing with the federal government, pertaining to the security lapse, the company revealed that it has shared personal and health-related information of patients who were attempting to seek therapy or other mental health care service via their app.
The collected and distributed data includes information like names, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, IP addresses, and other demographic data. In addition to data obtained from Cerebral's online mental health self-assessment, which may also have included the services that the patient chose, assessment responses, and other related health information was also there.
Reportedly, Cerebral was using trackers and other data-collecting programmes that the company included in its apps to share patient data with digital giants in real time.
In most cases, it has been observed that online users have no idea if they are opting into the tracking options in these apps, and simply accept the app’s terms of use and privacy policies, which they clearly do not read.
According to Cerebral, the data could vary from patient to patient based on different factors, like “what actions individuals took on Cerebral’s Platforms, the nature of the services provided by the Subcontractors, the configuration of Tracking Technologies,” and more. The company added that it will notify the affected users, regardless of “how an individual interacted with the Cerebral’s platform.”
Moreover, it claims that nothing such as the patient’s social security, credit card credentials, or bank account information has been exposed. Following the data breach in January, the company says it has “disabled, reconfigured, and/or removed any of the tracking pixels on the platform to prevent future exposures, and has enhanced its information security practices and technology vetting processes.”
It added that the company has terminated the tracking code from its apps. However, the tech giants are under no obligation in taking down the exposed data that Cerebral has shared.
Taking into account the way Cerebral manages sensitive patient information, it is being protected by the HIPAA health privacy regulation in the United States. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supervises and enforces HIPAA, has compiled a list of health-related security violations under investigation. Cerebral's data leak is the second-largest compromise of health data in 2023.