Photo of Maarten Stassen

Maarten Stassen is a partner in the Brussels office of Crowell & Moring, where he is a member of the firm's Privacy & Cybersecurity Group. His practice focuses on privacy and data protection, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and cross-border data transfers solutions, as well as on the legal and operational aspects of the digital ecosystem, including Internet of Things (IoT), MedTech, and upcoming technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technology (e.g. Blockchain).

Before joining Crowell & Moring, Maarten was a director in Deloitte’s Cyber practice, as well as the Faculty Leader of the European Privacy Academy. He has been focusing on privacy and data protection law for many years, first as a lawyer in both Spain and Belgium, and later as European Privacy Officer of an international health insurance company.

A new Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) alert advises that, starting in late May, a well-known ransomware group called Clop compromised a widely used managed file transfer (MFT) platform called MOVEit Transfer, reportedly impacting hundreds of companies globally. 

MFT platforms are used to securely transfer files between parties, and Clop reportedly compromised MOVEit Transfer using a previously unknown (zero-day) vulnerability that allowed attackers to steal files from MOVEit’s underlying database. This vulnerability is now tracked as CVE-2023-34362.

Clop has previously targeted MFT platforms such as Accellion and has shown that it is prepared to follow through on threatened next steps.  In this case, Clop is threatening to identify victim companies on the Clop site as soon as June 14 and then, if a ransom is not paid, publish victims’ stolen data.  In prior attacks, Clop has also reportedly contacted victim companies directly with ransom demands, sometimes weeks or more after the attack.  We do not recommend that victims contact threat actors like Clop directly but instead work with experts to do so safely, if necessary. Continue Reading MOVEit Vulnerability: What to Know and What to Do