Hackers Steal Pro Baseball Players' Personal Info
The personal information of a significant number of professional Major League baseball players has been illegally accessed in a new cyber security incident.
Data breach, garnished with ransomware
The entity that got attacked and breached is a third-party service vendor called Horizon Actuarial Services. The company announced that data related to one group welfare fund and a Major League players benefit plan has been accessed and stolen by a threat actor.
The total of individuals affected between the two data sets amounts to a significant 38 thousand people. Out of those, about a third or 13 thousand are persons whose data was contained in the Major League players' benefit plan.
The attack ended up with a bit of an unconventional event. While there was no mention of the word "ransomware" in the official announcement of the breach and the company chose to use the word "extortion incident", Horizon Actuarial was contacted by a threat actor using email. Once the company received the email and the claim that the data has been exfiltrated from its systems, they took on board a security consultant firm to help verify those claims.
Company pays the ransomware gang
The infosec investigation revealed that two systems belonging to Horizon Actuarial have indeed been accessed by unauthorized parties, with the incident taking place over a couple of days in early November 2021. The story ends with Horizon paying the ransomware gang because the attack was indeed ransomware. The company did not provide any specifics concerning the amount of ransom paid.
How wise it is to pay criminals and crooks for their "honest" word that they would not resell or otherwise misuse the stolen data is a different story.
Those affected by the data breach whose information has been leaked were contacted by the company and offered access to fraud and identity theft protection and support services. The potential for data misuse is much greater when a lot of the people in question are high-profile sportspersons with net worth in the millions of dollars.
