Hackers publish stolen Scots' regulator data

Criminals who stole thousands of digital files belonging to environmental regulator, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), have published them on the internet according to a report from the BBC.

The broadcaster reported that the regulator rejected a ransom demand after hacks raided about 1.2GB of data from SEPA’s systems on Christmas Eve. The data included contracts, strategy documents and databases among some 4,000 files released by the hacker.

According to SEPA cybersecurity expert, Hugo van der Toorn, at Outpost24 said:”:Even paying the ransom would not have guaranteed that the information would not get leaked, or that a higher ransom amount is asked at a later stage.

“However painful the recovery may be, this seems like the right response by SEPA. It probably has been a difficult decision, but it might very well be the safest way forward: To start from scratch, slowly recover from backups and ensure things are setup securely."