Prime Data Of 1.3 Million Maine Residents Hacked In International Cyber Attacks

Illustration of hackers in hacking. (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - Personal data from 1.3 million citizens living in Maine were hacked in international cyberattacks by hacker groups suspected of originating in Russia. The Department of Administrative and Financial Services notified citizens of this incident, involving personal information such as date of birth, SIM number, social insurance number, and health information.

Global cyber attacks occurred on May 28 and 29, regarding the MOVEit file transfer tool, which also involved access to 632,000 US federal employees in the Department of Defense and Justice. Various government agencies, large pension funds, and private businesses were also affected.

Allegedly, Russian hackers managed to exploit a weakness in a software application called MOVEit Transfer used by companies around the world to transfer files.

Residents are advised to check whether their critical information is accessed by contacting the available credit-free number. If so, the state will provide free credit monitoring.

In addition, a number of government agencies such as the Office of Control, Workers' Compensation, Motor Vehicle Bureau, Correctional Department, Department of Economic and Community Development, Human Resources Bureau, Professional and Financial Regulations Department, and Unemployed Compensation Bureau were affected by this attack.

More than 40 percent of Maine's Department of Health and Humanitarian Services staff were affected, while up to 30 percent of Maine's Department of Education was also affected, and others were less than one percent.

The attack has only been revealed to the people of Maine now, but the public has been aware of attacks by this group since June.

A number of federal government agencies, including the Department of Energy, were also compromised in the same attack. MOVEit's parent company in the US, Progress Software, has notified customers of the hack on May 31 and released an update. However, cybersecurity researchers say that if not hundreds of companies, most likely have sensitive data that was secretly extracted at the time.