Hackers threaten to publish insurance documents from 9/11

A hacker group called The Dark Overlord announced Monday that it had hacked into a law firm. This law firm handles cases related to the attacks of 9 September 2001. The hackers now threaten to publish a large number of internal files, unless a ransom is paid.

The Dark Overlord announced the attack on Pastebin, reports Motherboard. In it, the group refers to various insurers and law firms. The group claims to have hacked into Hiscox Syndicates, Lloyds of London and Silverstein Properties. “Hiscox Syndicates and Lloyds of London are two of the world’s largest insurers, securing everything from the smallest and biggest things on the planet, and even insuring structures like the World Trade Centers,” says the hackers.

Which documents the group stole is unclear. The Dark Overlord, however, says that the ‘18,000 secret’ documents can provide answers to conspiracy theories about 9/11. A spokesman for Hiscox has confirmed that the hackers had hacked into a law firm that was advising the company. Probably files related to processes around 9/11 were stolen.

“The office’s systems are not connected to Hiscox’s IT infrastructure and our own systems are not affected by this incident. One of the cases that the law firm handled for Hiscox and other insurers was related to events after 9/11, and we believe that information related to this was stolen during the attack,” said a spokesman.

Publications

The hacker group has published a small set of letters, e-mails and other documents that various law firms mention. It also mentions the Transport Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration. The documents themselves seem fairly harmless, but the group says it might publish more.

In a ransom letter, The Dark Overlord has a link to an archive of 10 GB of files it would have stolen. The group also gave a link to that archive to Motherboard, before it published its announcement. The archive is encrypted, but hackers threaten to publish the decryption keys. As a result, different sets of documents are always made available. To avoid this, victims must pay an unknown amount in bitcoin.

The Dark Overlord also claims to offer the data for sale on a hack-forum on the dark web. It also tries to blackmail people who may appear in the documents.