Pierluigi Paganini
September 17, 2020
Systems at the University Hospital New Jersey (UHNJ) were encrypted with the SunCrypt ransomware, threat actors also stolen documents from the institution and leaked it online. The incident took place in September.
The UHNJ is a New Jersey state-owned teaching hospital with over 3,500 employees that was established in 1994.
The hospital has a $626 million budget with over 172,000 annual outpatient visits.
The SunCrypt ransomware operation has leaked data allegedly stolen from UHNJ in a September ransomware attack.
SunCrypt ransomware operators first appeared in the threat landscape in October 2019, and over the past few months, they launched a dedicated leak site where they started publishing the data stolen from the victims.
In early Septembers, the Haywood County School district in North Carolina has suffered a data breach after having unencrypted files stolen during a SunCrypt Ransomware attack.
The ransomware attack took place on August 24th, 2020, but at the time the family of malware that infected the school district was not revealed.
The infection forced the school district to shut down its systems and suspend remote instruction
Now BleepingComputer first reported the attack on the UHNJ, the SunCrypt Ransomware leaked a 1.7 GB archive containing over 48,000 documents, they claimed to have stolen 240 GB of data.
“This data leak includes patient information release authorization forms, copies of driving licenses, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), date of birth (DOB), and records about the Board of Directors.” reported Bleeping Computer.
A BleepingComputer’s source informed about the incident revealed that an employee of UHNJ was infected with the TrickBot trojan at the end of August before the ransomware attack took place.
If confirmed, it is possible that threat actors used TrickBot to gain a foothold in the target network and then infect the largest number of systems as possible.
BleepingComputer made an interesting observation, while Maze denies any link with the SunCrypt gang, the SunCrypt ransomware operators told BleepingComputer that they are part of the Maze gang.
Experts also noticed that systems infected with SunCrypt connect to an IP address previously associated with Maze ransomware operations.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, SunCrypt Ransomware)
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