The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, or HACLA, has confirmed that it is investigating a cyber security incident shortly after the band LockBit ransomware claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against the agency.
HACKLA, which provides affordable housing to more than 19,000 low-income families in Los Angeles, was added to LockBit's dark web leaks site on December 31. The listing claims that LockBit has stolen 15 terabytes of data from the housing agency.
Screenshots posted by the cybercriminals suggest the data includes the personal details of people who sought housing assistance from the city, as well as data from the city's agency's payroll, human resources, and accounting files.
HACLA spokesperson, Courtney GladneyHe declined to comment on details, but said HACLA is experiencing "a cyber event" that resulted in an "outage" of the agency's systems.
“We are working diligently with third-party specialists to investigate the source of this outage, confirm its impact on our systems, and safely restore full functionality to our environment as soon as possible.”the spokesman said. "We remain committed to providing quality work as we continue to resolve this issue."
LockBit's alleged attack on HACLA marks the second major cyberattack against a Los Angeles city agency in recent months. In September, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the US, was attacked by the Russian-speaking Vice Society ransomware group. The gang subsequently released hundreds of gigabytes of data stolen during the attack, including passport details, social security numbers, health information, and psychological assessments of the students.
Meanwhile, LockBit is one of the most prolific ransomware gangs, with alleged attacks against tech maker Foxconn, UK healthcare provider Advanced and IT giant Accenture. In November, a Canadian-Russian dual national was charged for his alleged involvement with the ransomware gang.