Speaking of an own goal: Bologna FC hit by ransomware hackers
- Bologna has issued a short statement confirming that a cyber attack has taken place
- RansomHub takes responsibility, saying the club had virtually no defense
- The group claims to have stolen financial, medical and other data
Bologna FC, an Italian football club that belongs to the country’s elite, Serie A, suffered a devastating ransomware attack in which crooks stole a lot of sensitive information.
The club confirmed the news in a short statement published in Italian on its website.
“Bologna Football Club 1909 Spa announces that its security systems have recently been the subject of a ransomware cyber attack, on a cloud server and in its internal perimeter,” an automatic translation of the announcement said.
‘Bologna has no data protection whatsoever’
“This criminal action has resulted in the theft of company data that could potentially be made public. Anyone who comes into possession of such data is therefore cautioned against disseminating, sharing or any other use of such data as it stems from a crime,” the statement continued.
Although the club did not share many details about the incident, the attackers were quite vocal. According to The registrythe club was hit by RansomHub, a notorious ransomware player that emerged after the disappearance of ALPHV (BlackCat). The threat actor boasted about the attack on his data breach website and shared a few screenshots to prove his claims.
“Bologna FC was hacked due to a lack of security on their network. All confidential data has been stolen,” RansomHub reportedly said on its website. “Bologna FC has no data protection whatsoever on its network and therefore absolutely all their data has been stolen.”
According to The Register, crooks have taken passport scans, contracts and personal details of the club’s first-team players since 2017. They took the club’s financial data, medical data, commercial strategies and business plans. In addition, they stole a document that appears to be the contract of the club’s manager, Vincenzo Italiano. They eventually obtained his tax number and bank account number.
While all of these claims should be taken with a grain of salt, whoever ultimately purchases the data could use it for business email attacks, phishing, identity theft, and possibly even fraud if they turn out to be true.