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The Economic Development Institute of Lower Austria (WIFI) has fallen victim to a hacking attack. It is said that client and trainer data was not stolen. An international hacker group could be responsible.
The hacker attack occurred between January 25 and 26, WIFI confirmed in response to a request from noe.ORF.at. Training servers are said to be affected. This data could contain data about course operations, but not sensitive or personal data. “There was no possibility of accessing client and trainer data in WIFI NÖ,” confirms Institute Director Michaela Forlaufer.
The attack was quickly noticed and the affected servers were quickly reinstalled. Thus, the attack was repelled, according to WIFI. Training operations were not affected.
Speculation about a Russian-speaking hacker group
WIFI NÖ reported the attack to the police and reported it to the Data Protection Authority. Reports circulated on X/Twitter on Monday and Tuesday that Russian-speaking international hacking group Lockbit had claimed responsibility for the darknet attack. Lockbit specializes in stealing data from large companies in order to extort ransom money.
WIFI NÖ spokesman Bernhard Trostel told noe.ORF.at that WIFI NÖ had not been in contact with the attacker and therefore could not currently provide any information about the origin of the attack. However, no ransom was requested, the spokesman said. It has been confirmed that WIFI is in constant contact with the Data Protection Authority and the police.
