{"id":13235,"date":"2017-08-01T18:12:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T18:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/?p=13235"},"modified":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","slug":"dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"DLA Piper\u2019s Cyber Attack and Why It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

DLA Piper is not the first law firm to suffer a cyber attack, but it may be remembered that way after a powerful malware forced the global law firm to shut down or limit its email for hours on end and to work off of cellphones.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0the most glaring example to date of hackers interfering with\u00a0a major U.S.\u00a0law firm\u2019s ability to conduct its daily business, reports started\u00a0surfacing on Tuesday morning that the firm had shut down\u00a0its phone system and email. By the following day, the firm stated on its website, which remained functional throughout the ordeal, that it had shut down its email and other systems to contain the spread of what appeared to be \u201cPetya\u201d malware, and aimed to restore email\u00a0by the evening European time.<\/p>\n

News outlets in the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, and elsewhere reported on\u00a0the attack DLA suffered. But it is most likely not the first firm to fall victim to a ransomware attack: An FBI agent in New York told Big Law Business earlier this month\u00a0that other law firms have avoided such publicity from such attacks by paying a ransom to hackers.<\/p>\n

\u201cRansomware attacks have steadily increased in number,\u201d said Aristedes Mahairas, special agent-in-charge in the cyber division of the New York City\u2019s FBI field office, in\u00a0an interview<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cWe\u2019re hearing that there are law firms paying the ransom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spread of the Petya virus, which locks people out of their computer network and demands a $300 ransom in cryptocurrency follows on the heels\u00a0of\u00a0WannaCry, a ransomware that infected companies in 150 countries in May. And by Wednesday, there was speculation that whoever was behind the latest Petya attack wasn\u2019t interested in money, but rather disruption, because the malware also destroyed some computers\u2019 data, Bloomberg\u00a0reported<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

DLA Piper has not said whether it paid any ransom, but it has said it found no evidence that any client information was affected.<\/p>\n

A U.S.-based spokesman for DLA Piper, whose phone would not accept calls or messages on Tuesday, issued\u00a0a statement on Wednesday:<\/p>\n

On June 27, 2017, our advanced-warning system detected suspicious activity on our network, which, based on our investigation to date, appears to be related to the global cyber event known as \u201cPetya\u201d. Our IT team acted quickly to prevent the spread of the suspected malware and to protect our systems.<\/p>\n

We immediately began our investigation and remediation efforts, working closely with leading external forensic experts and relevant authorities, including the FBI and UK National Crime Agency.\u00a0We are working to bring our systems safely back online.<\/p>\n

A statement posted on the firm\u2019s website said its people continue to be available on their cell phones. In New Zealand, one paper\u00a0reported<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>that the firm\u2019s lawyers in the country could send but not receive emails.<\/p>\n

Overall, ransomware\u00a0is a fast-growing threat: According to Verizon\u2019s 2017 Data Breach Investigation\u00a0report<\/a>,<\/strong>\u00a0which surveyed the cybersecurity landscape, ransomware has moved up from the 22nd most common form of malware in 2014 to the fifth most common because it is fast low-risk and easily monetizable.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaw firms are certainly attacked by ransomware on a regular basis,\u201d said Adam Cohen, a managing director with data security expertise at the Berkeley Research Group, a consultancy, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know of anyone being shut down like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

More often, he said, you hear about law firms being targeted because\u00a0they serve as repositories of their client\u2019s most sensitive information, which can be used for corporate espionage, insider trading or other criminal purposes.<\/p>\n

In March 2016,\u00a0Big Law Business\u00a0reported<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on\u00a0an FBI alert about a web post on\u00a0a \u201ccyber criminal forum,\u201d seeking hackers who could penetrate\u00a0law firms\u2019 computer networks and\u00a0steal data for an insider trading scheme.<\/p>\n

The threat detection company Flashpoint Security also issued a client alert in February 2016, obtained by Big Law Business, which described a character named \u201cOleras\u201d who wanted to harvest data from law firms for insider trading, and provided a spreadsheet with\u00a0a list of 48 law firms including both\u00a0Weil Gotshal & Manges and Cravath Swaine & Moore, which the Wall Street Journal later reported suffered data breaches.<\/p>\n

But even though Weil and Cravath are\u00a0among just a few law firms reported to suffer\u00a0a data breach, their situations differed in that there were no reports that the hackers disrupted its computer networks in the same way as at DLA Piper,\u00a0where\u00a0lawyers were forced use their cellphones for communications, according to the firm\u2019s note to clients.<\/p>\n

Of course, there have been other publicized examples of hackers penetrating smaller law firms, and\u00a0even international law firms, such as Panama\u2019s Mossack Fonseca, whose client information\u00a0was exposed<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>after hackers stole 11.5 million documents and leaked them to an international consortium of journalists.<\/p>\n

DLA Piper, with a reported $2.5 billion in revenue in 2016 and nearly 4,000 lawyers and offices in 40 countries, is among the largest law firms in the world and the U.S.<\/p>\n

In terms of the victims of Petya, the firm\u00a0is likely one of the smaller companies affected. This week,\u00a0Petya wreaked havoc, bringing\u00a0a port terminal in India to a standstill,\u00a0shutting down<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0infecting various\u00a0other large companies to varying degrees, including the French snack company Mondelez Inernational Inc, the French bank BNP Paribas and the U.K. media company WPP Plc.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, such cyber attacks can be especially damaging to law firms\u2019 reputations, not only because their clients trust them to protect their information. Increasingly, law firms such as DLA Piper\u00a0are seeking\u00a0to market themselves as seasoned experts in data security and privacy, an area where there is a\u00a0growing amount of legal work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the hot new area,\u201d said Adam Oliver, managing director of Firm Prospects, who owns a recruiting firm as well as a market intelligence firm.<\/p>\n

His firm tracks job postings\u00a0on law firm websites, and found that in\u00a0the first quarter of 2017, there was a nearly 10 percent year-over-year jump\u00a0in the number of new positions related to data security or privacy, posted\u00a0at the largest 200 U.S. law firms. Oliver said that among those 200 firms, there are\u00a0440 attorneys that now\u00a0list data security, privacy or some variant as the sole or main focus of their practice, even though just a few years ago there were so few attorneys concentrated in this area that\u00a0his firm did not bother to officially track numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s curious because everybody wants to be a cybersecurity expert now because firms need to be able to market it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s just a new sentence in a lot of these bios that say, \u2018he\u2019s now an expert in data security and privacy.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DLA Piper is not the first law firm to suffer a cyber attack, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nDLA Piper\u2019s Cyber Attack and Why It Matters - Digital Sentinel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DLA Piper\u2019s Cyber Attack and Why It Matters - Digital Sentinel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"DLA Piper is not the first law firm to suffer a cyber attack, […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Digital Sentinel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-01T18:12:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-02-01T11:39:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/dla-piper.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"660\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Digital-Sentinel\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Digital Sentinel\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/\",\"sameAs\":[],\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/#logo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Digital-Sentinel.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Digital-Sentinel.gif\",\"width\":613,\"height\":224,\"caption\":\"Digital Sentinel\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/#logo\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/\",\"name\":\"Digital Sentinel\",\"description\":\"Profit Protection Technology\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/dla-piper.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/dla-piper.jpg\",\"width\":1080,\"height\":660},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/dla-pipers-cyber-attack-matters\/\",\"name\":\"DLA Piper\u2019s Cyber Attack and Why It Matters - 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