British Library Suffers Major Technical Outage Following Cyberattack
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
The British Library is still reeling from a major IT outage caused by a cyber incident that impacted its digital services on October 28.
According to its official statement on X (formerly Twitter), the ongoing outage continues to affect its website, phone lines, and services on site in London and Yorkshire.
The library’s buildings remain fully operational, and few services continue to be available onsite , like:
- Temporary Reader Registration passes.
- Reading Rooms for personal study.
- Collection items ordered to view in the Reading Rooms on or before October 30.
- Very limited, manual collection item ordering in London via our printed catalogs, for items stored in St Pancras only.
Moreover, the Fantasy exhibition and public spaces will continue to operate as normal, and tickets for the events can be bought on site with cash payments.
The statement did not disclose if any personal or financial information of employees or customers had been accessed during the incident.
Although the library is yet to share the details of the incident or the threat actors behind it, to estimate the severity of the incident and its impact, it’s investigating the incident with national agency and third-party cybersecurity experts.
‘’We are continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber incident, which we’re investigating with NCSC and other specialists.’’
The British Library apart from being the national library of UK, is also one of the largest libraries in the world. Located in London, its collection is estimated to contain around 200 items, including music scores, manuscripts, maps, philatelic items, drawings, sound recordings, and much more.
On October 28, another public library, the Toronto Public Library suffered a similar cyber security incident, ‘’the following services are unavailable: your account, map passes and digital collections. Public computers and printing services at our branches are also unavailable,’’ the official statement read.
Millions of Indian Citizens’ Personal Information for Sale on the Dark Web
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
The personally identifiable information (PII) of millions of Indians is available for sale on the dark web including the government issued Aadhar cards, claims cybersecurity firm, Resecurity.
The American company in a recent report revealed that during its monitoring of the dark web, Breach Forums, it discovered a threat actor’s post, claiming to have access to important personal data of Indian citizens .
‘’On October 9th, a threat actor going by the alias ‘pwn0001’ posted a thread on Breach Forums brokering access to 815 million “Indian Citizen Aadhaar & Passport” records,’’ the report revealed.
The 90 GB dataset contains a wide range of information, including names, ages, fathers’ names, phone numbers, passport and Aadhar numbers, gender, addresses, and it is being offered for a mere $80,000.
To prove the authenticity of the stolen data, the threat actor also shared spreadsheets containing 100k records with ‘’fragments of Aadhaar data as a proof’’. To verify their claims, Resecurity researchers checked the Aadhar credentials via an Indian government portal that provides a “Verify Aadhaar” feature.
Although it’s unclear when and from where the information was breached, signs point towards the data collected by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) during the 2020-21 COVID epidemic.
Earlier in August 2023, the firm identified another Beach Forums post claiming to sell 1.8 TB of data stolen from an India law enforcement organization. The database sold by a threat actor, nicknamed Lucius, contained a more extensive array of PII data. It included the driving license and Voter ID records of around 85% of the Indian population.
With the emergence of India as a top five geography for cyberthreats ( Trend Micro 2023 Cybersecurity Threat Report ), the leak of PII data on the dark web creates risks of digital crimes.
‘’The leak of PII data containing Aadhaar (and other details) of Indian citizens on the Dark Web creates significant risk of digital identity theft. Threat actors leverage stolen identity information to commit online-banking theft, tax refund frauds, and other cyber-enabled financial crimes,’’ the report stated.
