Florida officials on Friday said the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles was the victim of a cyberattack.
Florida’s DMV said it is investigating a data breach by an “international cybercriminal organization” that it learned about on Sept. 4. Officials said a hacker breached a single Plant City Police Department user’s credentials that were “improperly housed on the employee’s personal electronic device.”
“The data breach was quickly mitigated, and no further breach has occurred or is ongoing,” the state DMV said in a statement.
The DMV offered few other details.
The development comes after ShinyHunters, a group of hackers that targets organizations for sensitive information and then extorts them for a payment to delete it, announced on its dark web site that the “Florida DMV” was its latest victim last week, according to NBC News.
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The website gave a deadline of Sept. 11 for Florida to negotiate a fee not to release hacked files, according to the outlet. On Friday afternoon, after the Florida DMV published its statement, ShinyHunters deleted references to Florida.
That is often an indication that the state is now negotiating with the hackers to discuss a possible payment not to leak hacked information, according to Ian Gray, vice president of intelligence at the threat monitoring company Flashpoint.