New Zealand: Law Firm Ransomware Attack, 16 January 2025

New Zealand law firm Bell & Graham confirms SafePay ransomware attack.

Claimed stolen 15 gigabytes of data, including legal correspondence and a large amount of identification documents

Source: New Zealand law firm Bell & Graham confirms ransomware attack | Cyberdaily.au

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Law firm Bell & Graham, based in New Zealand’s Matamata region, has confirmed to cyberdaily.au it was the victim of a recent cyber attack. “We are currently reaching out to our active clients and business community to inform them of the incident. Given the disruption to our IT systems, this has unfortunately taken some time, and we are sending out further notifications as we can.”

The SafePay ransomware gang listed Bell & Graham on its darknet leak site overnight, saying on 14 January that it had stolen 15 gigabytes of data. The dataset was published at the same time and appears to include legal correspondence and a large amount of identification documents.

Bell & Graham said it had notified New Zealand’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner and CERT NZ. New Zealand Police’s cyber crime unit has also been informed.

According to research by cyber security firm Huntress, SafePay only began operating within the last couple of months of 2024. The gang is thought to be Russian-speaking or based in Russia itself, as part of its attack process is scanning for systems that feature the Cyrillic character set as their default language.