- The QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, is investigating a “likely” data breach after a third-party service was compromised.
- The medical research institution said its early investigation indicates that certain data stored in file-sharing system Accellion has been accessed.
- Accellion, a US-based company that offers a secure file sharing system, announced it had been the victim of a cyber-attack on December 25 last year.
- QIMR Berghofer said that it used Accellion’s services to share data related to clinical trials of anti-malaria drugs. However, it confirmed that no personally identifiable information was stored in the files.
- Instead, the organization said that codes are used to refer to study participants.
- The breach at Accellion impacted a number of organizations worldwide after a 20-year-old product that was nearing end of life – Accellion FTA – was targeted.
- Accellion said that attackers took advantage of a zero-day product in the legacy software during the “sophisticated” hack.
– Jessica Haworth | February 11, 2021
