In another effort to protest the badger culls in the U.K., a group has claimed to have accomplished a cyberattack.
The latest insurance news is surrounding an unlikely event which came about when animal rights activists announced their claim that they have been able to hack into the systems of an insurer that is linked to the National Farmers Union (NFU) so that they could steal the financial data of supporters of the badger culls.
The activists say that they were able to break into the NFU Mutual systems and have been modifying and extracting accounts.
The claim making insurance news is that the cyberattack started last month and that they have been making alterations and extractions to customer accounts since that time. However, according to NFU Mutual, they have been investigating these statements and have not found any indication that data intrusions have occurred.
The insurance news was first published as a statement on the website of an American animal rights publication.
The U.S. publication called BiteBack reported the insurance news that the activists had “exploited vulnerabilities” in the systems of NFU Mutual and had been doing so since last months. The hack had been in the works since last September, said the report. The activists claimed to have been able to access and modify the accounts of the people that they say are taking part in the badger cull that will kill an estimated 5,000 animals in Somerset and Gloucestershire.
The insurance news statement went on to say that the cyberattack had given the activists the ability to “download almost all of their customer files including full financial details, claims and account history.” The information used by BiteBack was gleaned from an anonymously sent letter, which was signed “BrockCyberClan – saving wildlife one bit at a time”.
The activists and hackers used the letter to threaten to exploit the customers of NFU Mutual, being quoted in the insurance news piece as saying “We will show the same mercy to their finances that they show to the lives of badgers. We already have plans to use the details we have on some of the more high profile supporters of the cull.” As of yet, absolutely none of these claims have been verified and an NFU Mutual spokesperson spoke confidently about the “very strong systems and controls in place” by the insurer.