Cyber attack causes delays to house sales and purchases across the UK

It has been announced that a cyberattack on CTS, a legal sector specialist infrastructure service provider, is causing delays to house sales and purchases across the UK.

The company made a statement on its website which read: ‘We are experiencing a service outage which has impacted a portion of the services we deliver to some of our clients.

‘The outage was caused by a cyber incident. We are working closely with a leading global cyber forensics firm to help us with an urgent investigation into the incident and to assist us in service restoration.

‘We continue to work around the clock with the assistance of third-party experts. Whilst we are confident that we will be able to restore services, we are unable to give a precise timeline for full restoration. We will continue to communicate directly with those of our clients which are impacted by the service outage, providing regular updates on the status of our work to restore services and our investigations into the incident.’

In response to the news, Mike Newman, CEO of My1Login, comments: “This sounds like a major attack that is still being remediated, and based on the information available the outage is causing concerning delays to house sales across the UK.

“Buying or selling a house is a stressful enough experience, so this incident is going to cause immense personal damage to those that suffer the consequences of it.

“It sounds like estate agents and conveyancers are being impacted as a result of the attack on CTS, which highlights the difficulties of depending so heavily on third party software. Suddenly everything comes to a halt, it’s not just the target of the attack that suffers the consequences.

“The attack is another reminder that there is no immunity from cybercrime today. Attackers have a long target list and there is a high chance you are on it. This means improving defences must be a priority.

“With over 80% of today’s cyberattacks being executed through stolen credentials, organisations must focus on securing these as a priority. Phishing is generally a tactic used to steal passwords from employees, so the safest way to remediate this threat is by removing passwords from the hands of the workforce, eliminating the phishing risk altogether. Using a modern workforce identity management solution that provides Single Sign-On and enterprise password management, this enables passwords to be used where applications rely on them, but have them hidden from the workforce, significantly improving the user experience and enhancing security.”