It’s hit again. This time hackers broke into the computer systems of care organization Joris Zorg in Oirschot. They penetrated client and employee data and that data is now shared online. The attack was carried out by LockBit, the same group that broke into the KNVB football association. LockBit itself claims to have stolen a hundred gigabytes from the care group.
Joris Zorg is the umpteenth in a considerable list of hacked organizations. Joris Zorg consists of five residential care centers, located in Oirschot, Middelbeers, Vessem and Hoogeloon. Given the amount of leaked information, there is a good chance that the shared data contains confidential information, such as the names of residents and their medical condition.
Joris Zorg warns clients and their family members to be alert to strange or unexpected calls or messages. “This is especially true when someone poses as an employee of your bank, for example.” Some clients have also been advised to have their passports and identity cards replaced.
Most notable hacks
A selection of the most notable hacks of 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 a physical disability, fell victim to hostage software, or ransomware. As a result, it lost a file with data from 4700 holidaymakers.
It contained names and addresses, but also information about the physical condition of the travellers. If the Sunflower wanted the document back, a ransom had to be paid. Because there was another backup file, it didn’t get that far in the end.
Mandemakers Group (2021)
Last year, for a while, bathrooms and kitchens were designed in the old-fashioned way with pencil on squared paper at the shops 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 the systems were still backed up.
Still, the company didn’t dare to use that backup until days later, probably because a lot of recent data wasn’t there yet. In the meantime, the delivery of furniture was halted, grates were made by hand to get bathrooms and kitchens to the right people on time and the design pencil was therefore taken out of the drawer again.
VDL (2021)
It took VDL in Eindhoven more than a month to get everything back on track at the end of last year after a serious cyber attack. Incidentally, it not only shut down VDL itself, partners such as Philips and ASML also became victims of the hostage-taking of their important supplier.
Thanks to sophisticated protocols, backups could be made of large parts of the system. 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 turned out a little less badly for the municipality of Geertruidenberg. At the end of last year, they discovered just in time that the municipality’s website, which residents use to make appointments, for example, was susceptible 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 the private data of residents for identity fraud or for sending phishing emails, for example. That problem was therefore prevented by the early warning, after which an update made the systems watertight again.
Housing corporations (2022)
This spring it was also a 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 a 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 the demands are ridiculous,” said spokesperson Noud Bex. As a result, thousands of files with private data from customers ended up on the dark web, such as copies of IDs and bank details.
Colosseum Dental (2022)
Dentist organization Colosseum Dental, with its headquarters in Oosterhout and 38 branches in this province, paid ransom to criminals last year to put an end to a cyber attack. Agreements were made about the return and security of data. “Only in this way were we able to minimize the risk for all involved in this short term and restore the practice relatively quickly.”
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