Alright, mates! Gather ’round for an intriguing tale of cybersecurity meddling. Unpleasant as it is, let’s dive into the recent saga involving a dark-web villain by the name ‘BlackCat’, and the well-known firm, loanDepot.
So, here’s the scoop. On the cold morning of February 16, dark web domain BlackCat stirred up quite a fuss by announcing it had added loanDepot to its ominous leak site, but crikey, there was a catch: no top-secret data was revealed. Our mates at BlackCat blabbed that representatives from loanDepot had popped into their chatroom, waving a whopping $6 million for a set of data and a decryptor. They even teased, with an impish wink, that they might rustle up an even bigger purse after the weekend.
But alas, after the weekend merriment, loanDepot seemingly vanished into thin air. And BlackCat? They turned into quite a tattle-tale, airing an assortment of other unfounded suspicions about loanDepot and their handling of the incident. But let’s not muddle our waters with unverified whispers, eh?
Fast forward to this week, in which loanDepot dropped a bit of a bombshell. The company owned up to a data breach, officially reporting it to the Maine Attorney General’s Office. Are you ready for this? A mind-boggling 16,924,071 customers found themselves in the soup due to this incident.
Without mincing words, loanDepot clearly stated in its customer outreach that the misdemeanour had been discovered on January 4. It seems the dirty deed of siphoning off data had occurred between January 3 and 5. The information at risk? Names, addresses, email addresses, financial account numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers, and dates of birth – the full Monty.
The firm, however, remained tight-lipped about whether their data had been locked up and if they possessed any backup to restore full functionality. BlackCat, however, couldn’t resist throwing in another accusation: apparently, loanDepot had desperately tried to score a decryptor in their haggling session. The notification letter kept mum about the overall impact of the cyber attack on the company’s operations, but reports on their website hinted that their functions and operations seemed to be back on track.
To show goodwill and address the curveball, loanDepot offered affected consumers two jolly years of complimentary services with Experian. A decent silver lining, wouldn’t you say?
So there you have it, chaps and chapettes— a real-life cyber mystery straight from the trenches. As we stroll through the wacky world of cybersecurity, let this tale be a reminder of how twisted our path can be when the dark web comes to play. Let’s keep our guard up, shall we? After all, you never know when you might stumble upon a BlackCat lurking in the cyber shadows.
by Parker Bytes
