Capita, Company Providing UK's Nuclear Submarine Training, Says It's Successfully Contained 'Cyber Incident' (therecord.media) 12
Capita, the United Kingdom's largest outsourcing company, confirmed Monday that an IT outage which left staff locked out of their accounts on Friday was caused by "a cyber incident." The Record reports: Staff attempting to login were erroneously told their usual passwords were "incorrect" according to reports, fueling speculation that a cyberattack was to blame, although not all of Capita's 61,000 employees were affected. At the time, a Capita spokesperson said the company was investigating "a technical issue."
In an update on Monday about the incident sent to the Regulatory News Service, the company confirmed it "experienced a cyber incident primarily impacting access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications." The nature of the incident has not been disclosed. While financially motivated ransomware attacks remain a prevalent threat for organizations in Britain, Capita also provides services to the British government that may be of interest to state-sponsored espionage groups.
Capita's numerous contracts include several with the Ministry of Defence. Last year, a consortium it leads took control over engineering and maintenance support of training simulators for the Royal Navy's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines used as part of the U.K.'s nuclear deterrent. In its statement, Capita said: "Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue," which was "limited to parts of the Capita network."
In an update on Monday about the incident sent to the Regulatory News Service, the company confirmed it "experienced a cyber incident primarily impacting access to internal Microsoft Office 365 applications." The nature of the incident has not been disclosed. While financially motivated ransomware attacks remain a prevalent threat for organizations in Britain, Capita also provides services to the British government that may be of interest to state-sponsored espionage groups.
Capita's numerous contracts include several with the Ministry of Defence. Last year, a consortium it leads took control over engineering and maintenance support of training simulators for the Royal Navy's nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines used as part of the U.K.'s nuclear deterrent. In its statement, Capita said: "Immediate steps were taken to successfully isolate and contain the issue," which was "limited to parts of the Capita network."
Yes....but (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
m i 6.
does anyone think these folks are busy elsewhere
Re: (Score:2)
why is an uk submarine shooting an russian torpedo
Because it can?
And Dr. Marvin Candle lost his arm in the incident (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Click Bait (Score:2)
The original article headline mentioning nuclear submarines was obviously click bait, it didn't need to forward to slashdot. And without the click bait part it's a pretty lame story. Oh my gosh, people who take submarine training might not have been able to to take their training for a few days. Catastrophe averted.
In other news, a shipping error of paper targets used at military shooting ranges has opened Finland wide to hostile invasion, news at 11.
Take out the nuclear submarine scary stuff and you end up
Re:Click Bait (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my gosh, people who take submarine training might not have been able to to take their training for a few days. Catastrophe averted.
And highly the classified training materials, records, training schedules, and all kinds of sensitive email may have been leaked.
Possibly even the simulation software for the nuclear submarines may have been leaked, or compromised. Details on the theory and operation, right down to which buttons to push under what circumstances.
And the training details and tactical theory used in the simulations.
Not to mention the personal details of the people at the company, related contacts, and the military submariner students. Good potential network and subversion/blackmail potential.
And the training and proficiency records of the submariners out at sea. What battle scenarios gave those particular people the most difficulty?
"Big but not all that important company inconvenienced by IT issue". Yawn. I wonder what's up with the Kardashians.
Yeah no big deal at all. Do they get that TV show where you live? Comrade?
Re:Click Bait (Score:4, Informative)
None of that information should be on Office 365 - if there's classified information on an unclassified public cloud app there are much bigger issues than this incident.
Re: (Score:3)
if there's classified information on an unclassified public cloud app there are much bigger issues than this incident.
No information should be on Office 365, but here we are.
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Capita are in charge of an awful lot of large government IT projects.
Along with Serco, they are the biggest UK government IT contractor, I believe.
They run things like the management system of almost every state school (SIMS), the NHS, identity cards, government-backed financial products, military projects via the Ministry of Defence, fire and rescue, immigration.
Capita is far more than "not all that important company". They are one of two of the UK government largest QUANGO's / outsourced IT providers.
So
AI (Score:2)
Defense & Microsoft... Ugh! (Score:2)
I don't understand how the management team of any defense related effort agrees to connect systems with Microsoft, especially Microsoft Office, Exchange, Active Directory or Outlook. That's basically asking for trouble. If I managed something like that, Microsoft would not have a single system on my network.