Hacker attack!
Opinion researcher was the victim of a hacker attack
Josef "Joe" Kalina - opinion researcher, advertising professional, communications guru. His good connections to politics, authorities and business have now apparently made the 66-year-old the target of cyber criminals. The servers of his Viennese PR agency UNIQUE Relations were hacked - 49.47 gigabytes of data were stolen and the jack-of-all-trades was blackmailed.
The attackers are said to be the group "Qilin", who usually rent out their software to plunder networks with lucrative data sets. In the current case, the "successful attack" on Kalina's company was reported on the darknet on November 5, 2023.
Employee raised the alarm early in the morning
"We got the matter under control quickly," asserted Josef Kalina in an interview with the "Krone" newspaper after an employee was unable to access any documents or drives early in the morning and raised the alarm. "We immediately reported this to the police and data protection authority and called in a cyber specialist."
The fact is, the virtual intruders demanded a ransom from the Viennese entrepreneur - bitcoins to be precise - to prevent the - also politically sensitive - documents from being sold on to the highest bidder. But nothing was paid, says Kalina. "We make daily system backups and were able to fend off further attacks. As a result, nothing was published that was compromising in any way."
We have not paid a "ransom". And nothing was released that would be compromising.
Josef Kalina, Unternehmer und renommierter Meinungsforscher
"These bombings are widespread"
Kalina does not believe that this is a targeted cyber attack. "There is an organization behind it. This is about widespread bombings."
Domestic security expert Cornelius Granig points out that the risk of cyber attacks being ordered by criminals is particularly high in the super election year 2024 and warns: "Encrypt your sensitive data and strengthen your security precautions to prevent criminals from misusing the data."
Kommentare
Willkommen in unserer Community! Eingehende Beiträge werden geprüft und anschließend veröffentlicht. Bitte achten Sie auf Einhaltung unserer Netiquette und AGB. Für ausführliche Diskussionen steht Ihnen ebenso das krone.at-Forum zur Verfügung. Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.
User-Beiträge geben nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des Betreibers/der Redaktion bzw. von Krone Multimedia (KMM) wieder. In diesem Sinne distanziert sich die Redaktion/der Betreiber von den Inhalten in diesem Diskussionsforum. KMM behält sich insbesondere vor, gegen geltendes Recht verstoßende, den guten Sitten oder der Netiquette widersprechende bzw. dem Ansehen von KMM zuwiderlaufende Beiträge zu löschen, diesbezüglichen Schadenersatz gegenüber dem betreffenden User geltend zu machen, die Nutzer-Daten zu Zwecken der Rechtsverfolgung zu verwenden und strafrechtlich relevante Beiträge zur Anzeige zu bringen (siehe auch AGB). Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.