The hacker group Clop, allegedly linked to Russia, put up for sale data stolen from the British police. This statement was made on Sunday by the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
According to the publication, information stolen by hackers can be bought on the darknet. The Mail on Sunday says that information from the Police national computer system (PNC), where information about 13 million British residents is stored, could have fallen into the hands of hackers.
"We are aware of the incident and we are working with our law enforcement partners to understand and limit the extent of its potential consequences," the Kingdom's National Cyber Security Center said.
The ransomware attack reportedly targeted the British IT company Dacoll, one of whose divisions provides remote access to PNC for 90% of UK police forces.
The company confirms that the incident happened on October 5, but claims that it was related only to the company's internal network and did not affect its clients or their systems. Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday claims that information from Dacoll's customers was put up for sale after the company refused to pay a ransom to hackers, the amount of which was not disclosed.
British cybersecurity expert Philip Ingram said that the damage caused by such a data leak is immeasurable, as now there are serious questions about the security of solutions used by numerous public and private organizations.
It is worth noting that the Clop group has been actively using the malware family with the same name since the winter of 2019, demanding a ransom for the return of access to blocked data. Some companies specializing in protection against hackers have suggested that some of the members of the group live in Russia.
The attackers put up for sale a database of drivers in Moscow and the Moscow region on the darknet. The database worth $800 contains 50 million lines with the data of drivers registered in the capital and Moscow region from 2006 to 2019. It was put up for sale on October 19, 2019. Information from 2020 is offered as a bonus for purchase.
The buyer can get the name, date of birth, phone number, VIN code, and car number of the car owner from the database, as well as find out the make of the car, model, and year of registration.
According to the seller, the information was obtained from an insider in the traffic police. Alexei Parfentiev, head of the Serchinform analytics department, also calls the insider's actions the reason for the leak. “It looks more likely also because the requirements of regulators to such structures as the traffic police, in terms of protection from external attacks, are extremely strict,” he said.
However, Andrey Arsentiev, head of analytics and special projects at InfoWatch, noted that the database could have been obtained not through the actions of an insider, but as a result of external influence, for example, through vulnerabilities in system software.
The forum where the database archive was put up for sale specializes in selling databases and organizing information leaks. The main buyers of personal data are businessmen and fraudsters. For example, companies can organize spam mailings or obtain information about competitors, and attackers can use personal data for phishing.
This is not the first time that traffic police databases have been put up for sale. For example, in August 2020, an announcement appeared on one of the hacker forums about the sale of a database with personal data of drivers from Moscow and the region, relevant to December 2019.
“This is not a single leak. This is a systematic (monthly) drain,” said Ashot Oganesyan, founder of DeviceLock.


