More than half a million gamblers with a penchant for powerballs will be receiving some fairly unwelcome news very soon, if not already, as cybercrimi

Cybercriminals hit jackpot as 500k+ Ohio Lottery lovers lose out on their personal data

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2024-05-10 18:30:07

More than half a million gamblers with a penchant for powerballs will be receiving some fairly unwelcome news very soon, if not already, as cybercriminals have made off with their personal data.

That's according to Ohio Lottery, which has this week finally revealed the scale of its Christmas Eve security breach in a regulatory filing.

The State lottery concluded its investigation into the incident on April 5 and as a result, some 538,959 individuals had their names and social security numbers exposed.

Ohio Lottery said there's no evidence to suggest that the stolen and subsequently leaked data has been misused by any malicious parties, but has offered all of those affected the standard 12 months of credit monitoring and ID theft protection.

It confirmed at the time that the intrusion didn't affect its gaming systems and lotto lovers were still safe to continue buying tickets, although lucky winners of sums exceeding $599 weren't able to cash out their prizes for some time as a result of the attack.

The organization has not attributed the attack to any group or individual, however, the miscreants who work for the DragonForce ransomware gang – not to be confused with the Malaysian hacktivists – claimed responsibility for the incident shortly after it was first disclosed.