Details of women staying in domestic violence shelters also leaked in laboratory hack
The data that leaked through a hack at the Clinical Diagnostics laboratory also contained the names and addresses of women living in shelters for domestic violence victims, RTL Nieuws discovered in an analysis of the leaked data. For these women in particular, keeping their whereabouts secret can be vital.
The leaked data included the women’s names, citizen service numbers (BSNs), and the addresses of the shelters where they were staying. Several women from multiple women’s shelters are affected. The shelters in question confirmed the data to RTL Nieuws.
Keeping the identity and whereabouts of these women secret can be crucial. Last month, an Eindhoven man tracked down his ex at the women’s shelter in Gouda, where she was staying, and shot her dead in front of their two children.
“Perpetrators of intimate partner violence will also be active on the dark web; we shouldn’t be naive about that,” Kirsten Regtop, an expert in domestic violence, told RTL Nieuws. “The most dangerous types are extremely cunning and will do anything to discover someone’s whereabouts.”
Clinical Diagnostics is a laboratory used for all kinds of medical tests ordered by general practitioners, as well as the population screening for cervical cancer. The data breach affects 485,000 women who participated in the cervical cancer screening and around 50,000 patients sent for tests by their house doctor, including at least one Minister and one parliamentarian.
Cybercrime group Nova claimed the hack and told RTL that the laboratory paid the ransom to prevent further data from being leaked. The hackers told RTL that they stole 300 gigabytes of data and only leaked a small portion of it. According to the broadcaster, the leaked portion of the data can no longer be downloaded, but it is still in the possession of everyone who accessed it before it was taken down.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) is investigating the data breach. “People must always be able to trust that their data is in safe hands, especially when it comes to their most personal information,” a spokesperson told the broadcaster. The AP spoke of a “very serious” breach.
