Ransomware Operators Leak Data Allegedly Stolen From City of Oakland

Over the weekend, the cybercriminals behind the Play ransomware published data allegedly stolen from the City of Oakland last month.

The cyberattack started on February 8 and was disclosed on February 10, when Oakland announced that it had taken systems offline to contain the incident, but that emergency services were not impacted.

One week later, while continuing restoration efforts, the city declared a local state of emergency, to speed up the procurement of equipment and materials.

On March 1, the Play ransomware operators created a listing on their leak website, claiming to be in the possession of large amounts of data stolen from the city.

Two days later, Oakland confirmed that the attackers exfiltrated data from its network, adding that it was aware of threats to release the stolen data.

On March 4, the Play ransomware operators made public a 10GB archive file that allegedly contains data stolen from the City of Oakland during the intrusion.

The leaked data, the cybercriminals say, includes personal information, financial information, identity documents, passports, employee information, and human rights violation information.

“We are working with third-party specialists and law enforcement on this issue and are actively monitoring the unauthorized third party’s claims to investigate their validity. If we determine that any individual’s personal information is involved, we will notify those individuals in accordance with applicable law,” Oakland said on Friday.

The city made no mention of any ransom demands coming from the attackers, but it is clear that it did not make a payment.

Also known as PlayCrypt and active since at least June 2022, the Play ransomware is one of the most active file-encrypting malware families. It was used in the recent attacks on Rackspace and A10 Networks.

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