Extortionists demand millions from Liberty; threaten to release "sensitive data" of "top clients"

Ransomware and extortion aren”t going away in 2018. A group of hackers has threatened financial services provider Liberty with the leak of “top client” data if they refuse to pay a ransom.

Parent company Liberty Holdings posted a notice on Saturday regretfully announcing it had been subjected to “unauthorized access to its IT infrastructure.”

“An external party claims to have seized data from us, has alerted us to potential vulnerabilities in our systems and has requested compensation for this,” the firm said.

Liberty says it took immediate steps to contain the situation and that it is actively investigating, adding that it will “endeavour to keep all stakeholders fully informed as appropriate.”

The notice reveals Liberty refused to pay the extortionists, and has called upon law enforcement authorities to get to the bottom of the situation.

“We are at an advance stage of investigating the extent of the data breach, which at this stage seems to be largely emails and attachments. At this point there is no evidence that any customer has suffered any financial loss,” the notice says.

Liberty promises to inform any customer that may have been impacted, if such evidence is eventually uncovered.

A report in the Sunday Times says the hackers were sitting on “sensitive data” about “top clients” and were threatening to release it if Liberty doesn”t pay the extortion money. According to the report, the hackers demanded millions from Liberty.