The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), one of the largest public housing authorities in the United States, confirmed that a cyberattack hit its IT network after recent breach claims from the Cactus ransomware gang.
HACLA provides affordable public housing and assistance programs to low-income families, children, and seniors in Los Angeles, California. As a state-chartered public agency, it administers over 32,000 public housing units on an annual budget of over $1 billion.
"We've been by affected an attack on our IT network. As soon as we became aware of this, we hired external forensic IT specialists to help us investigate and respond appropriately," a HACLA spokesperson told BleepingComputer.
"Our systems remain operational, we're taking expert advice, and we remain committed to delivering important services for low income and vulnerable people in Los Angeles."
The organization has yet to disclose when the attack was detected and if any sensitive data was exposed or stolen during the incident.
While HACLA didn't reveal the nature of the cyberattack, the Cactus ransomware gang has claimed the breach, saying it allegedly stole 891 GB of files from the compromised network.
Cactus claims this stolen data includes "personal Identifiable Information, actual database backups, financial documents, executives\employees personal data, customer personal information, corporate confidential data and correspondence," and has already published some screenshots of sensitive documents on its leak site as proof.
The ransomware gang has also uploaded an archive containing allegedly stolen files to prove their claims.
