- Southern Water avoids the question on the payment of ransomware
- February 2024 Attack saw data from stolen customers in apparent attack
- It is not clear whether the payment has been made or not
Southern Water avoided confirming or refusing complaints that she has paid for a pirate ransomware request following a major cyber attack.
The news announced that the company underwent a ransomware attack in February 2024 which would have seen a lot of data to the attackers lose a lot of data, data that ended up spreading on the Dark web by an infamous ransomware operator known as Black Basta.
However, recently, someone has disclosed around 200,000 messages exchanged between members of Black Basta, which prompted the safety company Hudsonrock to create a Blackbastagpt tool to help browse data more easily.
Payment and other hallucinations
Journalists of The register have now used the tool, in combination with raw chat data, to try to know if Southern Water has paid the ransom or not.
Apparently, the group demanded $ 3.5 million, which was too high for the water company, which would have asked to reduce the price requested at $ 750,000.
Although cat newspapers do not clearly say if the conditions were agreed, at some point, a member would have said: “These have already paid, remember?
However The register Note the GPT hallucinates a lot and that the information must be taken with a grain of salt. Set his hand directly to Southern Water, he did not receive a clear answer, with a spokesperson saying: “As soon as we became aware, more than a year ago, of an illegal intrusion affecting our systems IT (not affecting our operations or our services to customers), we have informed all the relevant bodies, including the NCSC and the DEFRA.
Southern Water is a public service company that provides drinking water and wastewater services to customers in southern England, including Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Wight Island. It uses water treatment facilities and sewer systems.
Black Basta was trained in 2022 and has since targeted at least 500 organizations, with notable victims include Ascension Healthcare, Capita, ABB and the American Dental Association.
