Breach, Data Security, Malware

Benjamin F. Edwards tells New Hampshire AG CryptoWall led to breach

The data breach that hit brokerage house Benjamin F. Edwards & Co. (BFE) in May was the handiwork of CryptoLocker copycat ransomware.

In a breach notification letter to the New Hampshire attorney general's office, the brokerage firm said that an employee was the victim of CryptoWall that encrypted files not only on that user's computer but also on “certain shared drives” that the employee could access. 

CryptoWall was behind a DropBox phishing scheme that infected nearly 350,000 machines and generated $70,000 in Bitcoins for attackers.

While a forensics specialist has not been able to identify the nature of the information compromised, the company acknowledged that data was indeed transmitted to a suspicious IP address and that it had taken “immediate steps” to mitigate the damage, including removing the malware and restricting IP addresses that BFE employees can visit.

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