A new criminal hacking group has appeared, claiming to have stolen data from firms in a number of countries including Canada and the U.S.
CoomingProject alleges its Canadian victims are a horse-breeding association and a women’s fashionware business. The U.S. site appears to be a work in progress for reading Japanese Manga graphic comics.
IT World Canada isn’t naming the Canadian organizations because we haven’t been able to contact them to confirm a hack. The horse breeding association’s website is offline, and the woman’s clothing site hasn’t responded to an email request for comment.
Threat groups have been known to bluff. Last year two Canadian companies stoutly denied a ransomware group’s claims they had successfully stolen data from them. The group posted copies of what they said were schematics stolen from the companies. The companies told IT World Canada that those drawings were already out in the public.
However, British Columbia-based Emsisoft‘s threat researcher Brett Callow, who tipped us off to this new group, says the data posted on the CoomingProject site appears to be legitimate.
It isn’t clear if this group steals data and demands a payment or works like a ransomware group by encrypting corporate data.
The CoomingProject’s website says, “We attack all over the world but the first instructions we received were to France and Canada.” Callow isn’t sure what to make of the wording about “first instructions,” but notes sometimes sentences on criminal websites make more sense in the language they were originally written in.