American insurer Global Life says a cyber incident in June has led to an extortion attempt on the company.
Globe Life (GL) is one of the largest US financial services companies which operates through its wholly owned subsidiaries, providing life insurance, annuity, and supplemental health insurance products.
The Texas-based firm discovered in June that unknown threat actors had compromised one of its web portals and had potentially stolen customer data.
Hackers made off with customer data
In an SEC filing last Thursday, the insurer confirmed the hunch, saying the hackers indeed managed to obtain “personally identifiable information categories such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, and in some instances Social Security numbers, health-related data, and other policy information for approximately 5,000 individuals.”
Based on the firm’s still-ongoing investigation, GL believes that the stolen data “may relate to certain customers and customer leads that can be traced to the Company’s subsidiary, American Income Life Insurance Company.”
Since the investigation continues, the total number of potentially impacted persons and the full scope of information stolen by the threat actor has not been fully verified, meaning the number of affected parties could be higher.
The data set obtained by the threat actor “does not appear to contain personally identifiable financial information such as credit card data or banking information,” the SEC filing says.
Extortion attempt
“Most recently, the threat actor also shared information about a limited number of individuals to short sellers and plaintiffs’ attorneys,” GL adds. “The threat actor claims to possess additional categories of information, which claims remain under investigation and have not been verified.”
GL says the threat actor recently made contact to attempt to extort money from the company “in exchange for not disclosing certain information held and used by the Company and its independent agents.”
The extortion attempt did not involve ransomware, so GL’s systems were not subject to the disruption typically associated with a data-crippling malware infection, the statement adds.
The company is now notifying affected individuals with advice “as needed to protect and remediate the impact for them, and continue to communicate with regulatory authorities.”
Anyone affected by a data breach should consider a data monitoring service like Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection to find out if your data has leaked online, what type of information was compromised, what risks you face, and whether your information is for sale to fraudsters on the dark web.
If you’re a Global Life customer, be wary of any unsolicited communications citing your personal data. Fraudsters typically buy data stolen in breaches like this one to craft scams to defraud you.
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