Cyber-attacks reach the real estate market and fears of hacking vital sectors

Cyber attacks continue to dominate various sectors of the economy in the world, as they moved from financial services in Egypt and China to the real estate market in Britain, amid fears of targeting vital sectors of the economy.

A few days ago, an electronic virus struck the financial systems of the largest payments company in Egypt, and claimed that accounts of the Central Bank of Egypt had been hacked, according to the hackmanac website, which specializes in cybersecurity issues. However, the company denied that any hacking into its systems had occurred.

Ports in Australia

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was also hacked and was asked to pay a ransom, in addition to the penetration of the systems of the international company “DB World” in Australia, which operates and manages 4 major ports, which resulted in the cessation of shipping and transportation operations for several days.

Real estate market

But the electronic hackers were not limited to these sectors, but rather extended to the real estate market in Britain, where they launched an attack that caused the disruption of thousands of transactions related to the transfer of ownership, which led to the freezing of the actual movement in the market, and the disruption of buying and selling operations on a large scale, in an incident that is recorded for the first time. In the country.

According to details published by the British newspaper “The Daily Telegraph”, thousands of transactions related to the sale and purchase of real estate were disrupted as a result of the attack that targeted the information technology company used by law firms working in the field of transferring real estate ownership.

The outage of CTS services disrupted the work of about 80 law firms, and halted a series of property exchanges and completions across Britain since last Wednesday.

Ownership transfers

Rob Hailstone, CEO of Bold Legal Group, which runs a forum of 1,700 property professionals, said the outage affected thousands of household moves.

He added that some companies that should complete property transfers are no longer able, so completion notices are not sent, some people may end up in hotels or other places, and customers can file claims for losses as a result of breaches of contract.

CTS provides cloud space and IT systems such as emails, and about 40% of its 200% or so customers are known to have been affected by the outage.

CTS said on Friday that the outage occurred due to a cyber incident. We are working closely with a leading global anti-cyber-attack company to help us urgently investigate the incident and help us restore service, but it said it was unable to provide a specific timeline for resolving the issues.

Russian-speaking hacking

Sources in the real estate sector said, it is widely believed that the attack was the result of a flaw in Citrix, a program used by legal companies in real estate ownership transfers.

A flaw in this program was exploited by a Russian-speaking hacking gang, according to what the Daily Telegraph reported from the US Cybersecurity Agency (CISA).