By now, every managing partner has heard the warning: Law firms and their clients sensitive information are a treasure trove for hackers.
But the ransomware attack Tuesday on DLA Piper sounded a different type of alarm for Big Law. The world s biggest firms are just as prone to ransomware attacks as any other company, and the potential ramifications of a network-crippling malware infection are wide-ranging for a service industry that holds the legal fate of corporations in its palm.
Consider litigators unable to access motions on a deadline. Trial lawyers preparing for arguments without key documents. Transactional lawyers unable to communicate with clients attempting to close multibillion-dollar deals.
And of course, anxious and possible angry clients.
The domino effect of doing something like this to a law firm permeates so many different parts of business, said John Sweeney, president of LogicForce, a startup cybersecurity consulting firm. Suffice it to say, it s going to touch hundreds if not thousands of different points of business, and not only in the U.S. It s a nightmare, there s no doubt about it.
Phone lines at DLA Piper were down Tuesday across Europe and the U.S. According to media reports and a photo tweeted by Politico reporter Eric Geller in Washington, D.C., employees were instructed not to turn on their computers and to unplug their laptops from the network.
All network services are down, a whiteboard read in what appeared to be the firm s Washington lobby.
A DLA Piper spokesman confirmed the firm had been the target of a possible malware attack that had affected a large number of organizations across the globe Tuesday, including pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc.
The firm, like many other reported companies, has experienced issues with some of its systems due to suspected malware, said DLA Piper s statement. We are taking steps to remedy the issue as quickly as possible.
Much like the WannaCry ransomware attack that spread throughout the globe in mid-May, the new round of attacks reportedly requests a payment of $300 in Bitcoin in order to obtain a decryption code that may unlock an organization s files.
While security experts were still scrambling Tuesday to determine the extent of the encryption or any other damage levied by the newest batch of ransomware, at least 27 organizations appeared to have paid the ransom as of early Tuesday, according to a blockchain transaction record.
A study released Tuesday by LogicForce shows the ubiquitous risk of hacking for law firms. The company surveyed more than 200 firms and found that all had been subjected to hacking attempts, while 40 percent of those attempts were successful. What s more, the 40 percent of firms who had been hacked were unaware of it, according to the report. Sweeney said DLA Piper was not included in his company s survey.