Pierluigi Paganini
June 12, 2023
The Play ransomware attack suffered by the IT services provider Xplain is worse than initially estimated, the incident also impacted the national railway company of Switzerland (FSS) and the canton of Aargau.
In early June, Swiss police launched an investigation into the cyber attack that hit the Bernese IT company Xplain, which provides its services to several federal and cantonal government departments, the army, customs, and the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol).
The news of the attack was first reported by the Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
“for the first time, several cantonal police forces, the Swiss army or the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) are indirectly affected by a cyberattack.” reads Le Temps. “These major players in security have one thing in common: they have the same IT service provider, the Bernese company Xplain, which has just been hacked.”
Threat actors initially published alleged stolen data from the Federal Office of Police (Fedpol) and the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS) on a Darknet forum.
Local media reported that attackers have exploited a vulnerability on the servers of the company.
Both Fedpol and the federal customs office confirmed the attack but attempted to downplay the incident. According to Fedpol, threat actors only had access to simulated, anonymous data for test purposes.
Xplain notified Fedpol about the attack a few days ago, revealed a Fedpol spokesman who added that the projects of the agency were not exposed.
The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCBS) said data from the FOCBS that were exposed are from correspondence with its clients.
The news of the FSS data leak was initially reported by the magazine NZZ am Sonntag and later confirmed by the Swiss railway company.
The authorities of the canton of Aargau also confirmed the data breach.
“The Aargau authorities said for their part that they assume that “in addition to company correspondence, a small volume of operational data from error logs which was at Xplain for analysis was also affected”.” reported the website RSI.
The authorities are still investigating the security breach to determine the extent of the attack.
This week, the website of the Swiss parliament has been the target of cyber attack as reported by the president of the House of Representatives, Martin Candinas.
“The problems appeared on Wednesday afternoon. At the end of the day, parliament’s services said the attack had been neutralised and that no internal systems or data had been affected. On Thursday morning, however, there were still problems accessing the websiteExternal link.” reported the website SwissInfo.
The attack is not linked to the XPlay ransomware attack.
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