For days, the private data of thousands of Colosseum Dental patients threatened to end up on the streets. And all because the dental organization, with its head office in Oosterhout, was hacked. In the end, the company paid a ransom to end the cyberattack. Worrying, but certainly not unique in Brabant. A selection of the most notable hacks from recent years.
The Sunflower (2017)
A few years ago it was already a hit at De Zonnebloem in Breda. The organization, which provides travel for the elderly and people with disabilities, fell victim to ransomware, or ransomware. As a result, it lost a file containing data of 4700 holidaymakers.
It contained names and addresses, but also information about the physical condition of the travelers. If the Zonnebloem wanted the document back, a ransom had to be paid. Because another backup file was made, it didn’t get that far in the end.
Mandemakers Group (2021)
Last year, for a while, bathrooms and kitchens were again designed in an old-fashioned way with pencil on squared paper at the stores of the Mandemakers Groep from Waalwijk. The company was paralyzed in the summer of 2021 by hackers, who demanded a ransom. In the end, this turned out not to be necessary, because there was still a backup of the systems.
Still, the company didn’t dare to use that backup until days later, probably because a lot of recent data was not yet on it. In the meantime, the supply of furniture came to a standstill, grates were made by hand to get bathrooms and kitchens to the right people on time and the design pencil was removed from the drawer again.
VDL (2021)
It took more than a month for VDL in Eindhoven to get everything back on track after a serious cyber attack at the end of last year. Incidentally, it not only shut down VDL itself, partners such as Philips and ASML also became the victims of the hostage-taking of their important supplier.
Thanks to sophisticated protocols, large parts of the system could be backed up. In this way, only one day’s worth of data was lost. VDL has never disclosed whether a ransom was paid to eventually break free from the hackers.
Municipality of Geertruidenberg (2021)
It ended a little less badly for the municipality of Geertruidenberg. There they discovered at the end of last year just in time that the municipality’s website, with which residents make agreements, for example, was sensitive to hackers. “Thanks to this leak, they can penetrate computer servers and install malicious software,” the municipality said.
If that had been successful, hackers could have used residents’ private information for identity theft or sending phishing emails, for example. That problem was prevented by the early warning, after which an update made the systems watertight again.
Housing associations (2022)
This spring it was already hit in Brabant. Then three large housing associations were hit by a cyber attack. As a result, the computer systems of Laurentius, Alwel and Zayaz were down for days from the weekend of March 26 and 27.
The criminals demanded ransom, but the corporations stood their ground. “First of all, it is about social money. In addition, we do not want to participate in criminal activities and these are ridiculous demands,” said spokesperson Noud Bex. As a result, thousands of files with private data of customers ended up on the dark web, such as copies of identity documents and bank details.
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