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Entertainment law firm confirms hackers have stolen 756GB of emails and contracts
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 13 May 2020
A New York-based law firm that works, or has worked, for artists like The Weeknd, U2, Nicki Minaj, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, Lil Nas X, Bruce Springsteen and Drake has confirmed that it has now hired a team of cyber-security experts after it emerged last week that the company’s servers had been hacked.
It’s thought as much as 756 gigabytes of data was grabbed by hackers from the servers of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, including personal correspondence with and contracts involving the firm’s celebrity clients.
The hackers are now seeking to extort money out of the lawyers under the threat that they will leak all that data if payment is not received. Said hackers were seemingly also behind another recent data-grab extortion scam involving foreign exchange company Travelex.
Amid reports that the FBI is now on the case, PageSix cites one source as saying: “The hackers got into the system while everyone was focused on the coronavirus. We assume, but there is no confirmation, that the hackers are Eastern European. They are demanding a $21 million ransom [but] the firm is not negotiating with them”.
Meanwhile, the law firm said in a statement: “We can confirm that we’ve been victimised by a cyberattack. We have notified our clients and our staff. We have hired the world’s experts who specialise in this area and we are working around the clock to address these matters”.
According to PageSix, when asked how the firm’s clients were responding to the news, a spokesperson pointed to a number of other high profile companies whose servers have been hacked in recent times and then added “clients have expressed overwhelming support as they understand the firm is the latest high-profile victim of this global extortion scheme”.
