Contact Group, which has locations in Hobart, Launceston, and Burnie, has a 30-year history that has seen it evolve “from being a small electrical contracting business, to the largest multi-technology company in the state”. It has customers in the commercial, government, healthcare, and education sectors.
The company was listed on the dark web leak site of the CMD Organization hacking group, which has put the allegedly stolen data up for auction, with the highest bid at the time of writing being 10 bitcoin.
While the group did not provide details of the cyber attack or the data it claims to have stolen, it did post a sample of the allegedly exfiltrated data, which featured a number of scans of driver’s licenses, revealing names, addresses, signatures, license class and document numbers.
The auction will end in just over six days, according to the threat actor.
Cyber Daily reached out to Contact Group, but the company declined to comment on the alleged incident.
Who is CMD Organization?
CMD Organization is a new player on the cyber criminal scene, having been first observed in May this year. At the time, it had eight victims, but now has a total of 42 listed.
The group advertises itself as a legitimate service and company, as do many groups of its kind.
“CMD is a new kind of company that specialises in corporate system security and in identifying vulnerabilities across all aspects of the software used by a company. CMD operates on a global scale recognising the critical importance of timeliness and confidentiality,” the group said on its leak site.
“Our mission is to create a secure online environment where every company is safely protected and immune to user data breaches.”
According to cyber security firm Beazley Security, CMD Organization operations began in March, and its tradecraft suggests a “potentially well-networked operator but with limited operational maturity, possibly leveraging initial access brokers (IABs) and limited original tooling”.
One of the group’s unique tactics is allowing anyone to bid on stolen data offered on its website, potentially driving up the price for victims to secure their data.
“If CMD Organization can shift part of the traditional ransom and extortion process away from private negotiations to public bidding opportunities, selling exclusive access to stolen data could increase the price according to the given demand of an actor,” Beazley Security said in a 14 May blog post.
“Locking the sale to a single buyer could empower the winner with exclusive access to the stolen data, giving time to sift through and operationalise credentials, identities, customer records, or other sensitive information before it is circulated to competing threat actors.”
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