European Commission Confirms Cyberattack, Investigates Data Theft
Summary
The European Commission says a cyberattack affected cloud infrastructure hosting its public web presence. It is investigating data taken from the sites; ShinyHunters separately claimed theft of more than 350GB. The Commission says internal systems were unaffected.
Key points
- The Commission said the attack affected cloud infrastructure hosting its web presence on Europa[.]eu; its public websites were not disrupted.
- The Commission’s early investigation suggests data was taken from the affected websites, but the full impact remains under investigation.
- The Commission said its internal systems were not affected and that it was notifying potentially affected EU entities.
- ShinyHunters claimed it stole more than 350GB, including mail-server dumps, databases, confidential documents and contracts; this claim is not independently confirmed in the article.
- BleepingComputer reported that the hackers said they targeted the Commission’s AWS accounts. AWS said it experienced no security event and its services operated as designed.
- The article suggests access may have involved a compromised account or misconfiguration, rather than an AWS product vulnerability.
Article Details
- Victim Organization
- European Commission
- Victim Domain
- Europa.eu
- Incident Type
- Cyber intrusion and potential data theft affecting cloud infrastructure hosting the Commission's web presence
- Data Types Exposed
- Mail server data (claimed)
- Database data (claimed)
- Confidential documents (claimed)
- Contracts (claimed)
- Potentially other sensitive material (claimed)
- Affected Data Size
- ShinyHunters claimed that more than 350GB of data were stolen; the amount has not been confirmed by the Commission.
- Operational Impact
- The Commission said the attack affected cloud infrastructure hosting its Europa.eu web presence. Its public websites were not disrupted, and its internal systems were not affected. The Commission's ongoing investigation had early findings suggesting data had been taken from those websites.
- Ransom Or Extortion
- ShinyHunters, described in the article as a cyber extortion group, claimed responsibility for stealing data. No ransom demand is reported.
- Claim Status
- confirmed