The email accounts of members of the Virginia Departments of Military Affairs and the Virginia Defense Force were attacked by a hacker in July.
The Virginia National Guard was informed about a cyber attack against the Defense Force.
A joint investigation with state and federal cybersecurity and law enforcement authorities revealed that the threat “impacted” the email accounts of the Virginia Department of Military Assistance and the Virginia Department of Defense, though no evidence of breaching was found.
“The investigation determined the threat impacted VDF and Virginia Department of Military Affairs email accounts maintained by a contracted third party, and there are no indications either VDF or DMA internal IT infrastructure or data servers were breached or had data taken,” A. A. Puryear, chief of public affairs for the Virginia National Guard, said. “There are no impacts on the Virginia Army National Guard or Virginia Air National Guard IT infrastructure.”
Puryear, the company’s chief technology officer, confirmed that the attack was not ransomware and that it did not involve email addresses being accessed.
However, on August 20, Marketo, a popular marketplace for stolen data, began offering a vast amount of data that was allegedly stolen from the Virginia Department of Military Affairs. Marketo previously made headlines for vending the data of Fujitsu, a Japanese technology firm.
In July, Digital Shadows published a report on the group, saying that the group was founded in April 2021 and sold stolen data using a Twitter account. The team has claimed that the gang was not a ransomware organization but a data marketplace.
According to Brett Callow, an expert from Emsisoft, how Marketo obtains the data it sells is still unknown. Some of the Marketo leak site victims that were hit by ransomware attacks include X-Fab and Luxottica.
