British Library cyberattack explained

In October 2023 Rhysida, a hacker group, attacked the online information systems of the British Library. They demanded a ransom of 20 bitcoin, at the time around, to restore services and return the stolen data. When the British Library did not acquiesce to the attempt, Rhysida publicly released approximately 600GB of leaked material online. It has been described as "one of the worst cyber incidents in British history".^[1]

The main catalogue returned online on 15 January 2024 in a read-only format, though some of the library's services are expected to remain unavailable for months. The British Library will use about 40 percent of its financial reserves, around £6–7 million, to recover from the attack.

Background

The British Library is a non-departmental public body which in 2023 held around 14 million books, as well as millions of other items.^{[2] [3]} It is the largest library in the United Kingdom.^[4] The Library was protected by firewalls that included both hardware and software components. Specific details about the software firewall used indicate that it was a Sophos XG Firewall, which provided comprehensive network protection and threat management. And was also protected by antivirus software also provided by Sophos, but was not using multi-factor authentication (MFA), and had installed a new Terminal Services server in February 2020 to facilitate remote access to third-party providers and internal IT administrators during the COVID-19 pandemic; this was the server on which unauthorised access was first detected during the attack. In 2020, the lack of MFA on the server was raised as a risk; a Library report later stated that "the possible consequences were perhaps under-appraised".^[5]

Rhysida is a hacker group and "ransomware as a service" provider already known for its attacks on vital infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and government agencies, having become known to intelligence services in May 2023.^[6] It had previously attacked the Chilean Army, a medical research lab in Australia, and health-care company Prospect Medical Holdings.

The British Library attack was part of a larger pattern of cyberattacks at this time against cultural institutions. These attacks had previously affected the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and Natural History Museum in Berlin.^[7]

Timeline of events

2023

• 28 October: At 9:54 a.m. GMT, The British Library states on Twitter that it is experiencing "technical issues affecting our website". By midmorning, issues include a public Wi-Fi outage and non-functional online catalogue.^[8]
• 29 October: The Library announces on Twitter that it is experiencing a "technology outage".
• 30 October: The Library reopens after the weekend "in a pre-digital state", according to The New Yorker. Its website, phone lines, ticket sales, reader registrations, and card transactions are non-functional. Deliveries from the Library's Boston Spa site are put on hold.
• 31 October: The Library confirms publicly that the outage is the consequence of a cyberattack.^[9] It launches an investigation alongside the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and other cybersecurity specialists.^[10]
• 16 November: An attempt at digital extortion, also known as a ransomware attack, is confirmed by the Library.
• 20 November: Rhysida claims responsibility for the breach and launches a week-long auction for 490,191 files of data on the dark web, opening bidding at 20 bitcoin, at the time equivalent to about, for a single buyer.^[2] It sets the auction deadline to 8 a.m. GMT on 27 November and advertises it with low-resolution images which appear to show HM Revenue and Customs employment contracts and passport information. It claims the data is "exclusive, unique and impressive". The Library states that the leaked data appears to be from its internal human resources files.
• 27 November: Rhysida makes 90 percent of the stolen data, approximately 600GB, freely available for anyone on the dark web to download after the British Library refuses to pay the ransom.^[11]

2024

• 5 January: The Library announces it will use around 40 percent of its financial reserves to recover from the attack, estimated at around £6–7 million.^[12]
• 10 January: The Library announces that some of its services will return online from 15 January, with access stated by Roly Keating, chief executive of the Library, to be "slower and more manual" than before the attack. Keating apologises that "for the past two months researchers who rely for their studies and in some cases for their livelihoods on access to the library's collection have been deprived of it".^{[13] [14]}
• 15 January: The British Library's main online catalogue is restored in a read-only format. Users are able to search the main catalogue, but the process of checking availability and ordering items is different. Access to key special collections is restored but for in-person visits only.^{[15] [16]}
• 8 March: Roly Keating authors a blog post to the British Library website announcing the availability of a report that "gives a description and timeline of the attack, to the best of our current understanding, and its implications for the Library’s operations, future infrastructure and risk assessment."^{[17] [18]} The report announced that it was undertaking a "Rebuild & Renew" scheme "to ensure its future ability to respond to incidents of a similar scale in a consistent and structured way", including a "considerable shift" away from on-site technologies and onto the cloud.
• 30 July: Library announces that remote ordering of physical media for delivery to the Reading Rooms will be available by September 2024. Digital versions of historically significant manuscripts will be re-released incrementally beginning in September, based on a "prioritised list of manuscripts based on criteria including the items that were most requested prior to the cyber-attack and items to which Reading Room access is restricted." Educational websites, and digital academic journals, will also be restored before the academic year 2024–25, to the extent possible. Digital ordering of items in the Automated Storage Building is expected to go back online in August 2024.^[19]

Attack methods

The Library stated that the attackers probably used a phishing, spear-phishing or brute-force attack facilitated by a compromise of third-party credentials as well as a lack of use of multi-factor authentication by the library. After gaining access, Rhysida used three methods to identify and copy the 600GB of documents during the attack, including personal details of Library users and staff. These were:

1. A targeted attack that copied full sections of network drives of the Library's Finance, Technology and People teams, which made up 60% of all content copied.
2. A keyword attack which scanned for files and folders that used sensitive keywords in their names, including 'passport' or 'confidential', which constituted 40% of the copied data and included files from corporate networks and personal drives used by staff.
3. A hijacking of native utilities, which were than used to forcibly create backup copies of 22 databases of data including contact details of external users and customers.

Furthermore, Rhysida and its affiliates destroyed servers to inhibit system recovery and forensic analysis.

Impact

While the process of calculating the full financial impact of the attack is ongoing, there were a number of impacts to the functioning of the library following the attack. These include:

• Library items from its Boston Spa branch could not be transferred to the London site.
• Around 20,000 writers, illustrators and translators who usually received Public Lending Right payments from borrowed books had their payments delayed.^[20]
• The Library's 2024–25 visiting fellowship programme was suspended.
• The computerised catalogue was offline for months, with partial restoration in January 2024.
• The EThOS collection of British doctoral theses remained offline as of 19 December 2023.
• An estimated £6–7 million in costs to recover from the attack.
• As of 16 May 2024, British Library electronic resources web pages redirect to a page with the statement, "We're continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack. Our buildings are open as usual, however, the outage is still affecting our website, online systems and services, as well as some onsite services. This is a temporary website, with limited content, which outlines the services that are currently available, as well as what's on at the Library."^[21]

See also

• WannaCry ransomware attack

Notes and References

1. News: Ash . Lamorna . 2024-02-06 . Thanks to a shadowy hacker group, the British Library is still on its knees. Is there any way to stop them? . 2024-02-22 . . en-GB . 0261-3077.
2. News: Sherwood . Harriet . 22 November 2023 . Personal data stolen in British Library cyber-attack appears for sale online . 15 January 2024 . . en-GB . 0261-3077 . 9 December 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231209004316/https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/22/personal-data-stolen-in-british-library-cyber-attack-appears-for-sale-online . live .
3. Web site: Uddin . Rafe . Stacey . Stephanie . 21 November 2023 . Cyber attack on British Library raises concerns over lack of UK resilience . 15 January 2024 . . 30 December 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231230183853/https://www.ft.com/content/642ee014-4768-4c65-b1ee-0d4f39a8a63d . live .
4. News: Rufo . Yasmin . 21 November 2023 . British Library: Employee data leaked in cyber attack . 16 January 2024 . . en-GB . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115449/https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67484639 . live .
5. Web site: Coker . James . 2024-03-11 . Third-Party Breach and Missing MFA Led to British Library Attack . 2024-03-12 . . en-gb.
6. Knight . Sam . 19 December 2023 . The Disturbing Impact of the Cyberattack at the British Library . 16 January 2024 . . en-US . 0028-792X . 20 December 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231220114107/https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-uk/the-disturbing-impact-of-the-cyberattack-at-the-british-library . live .
7. Web site: Harris . Gareth . 22 December 2023 . As British Library faces fallout of cyber attack—what can arts bodies do to combat ransomware threats? . 15 January 2024 . . 14 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240114170007/https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/22/as-british-library-faces-fallout-of-cyber-attackwhat-can-arts-bodies-do-to-fight-off-wave-of-ransomware-threats . live .
8. News: Sherwood . Harriet . 15 January 2024 . 'A 22-carat disaster': what next for British Library staff and users after data theft? . 15 January 2024 . . 15 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240115210514/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/15/british-library-cyber-attack-staff-users-analysis . live .
9. Web site: Scroxton . Alex . 15 January 2024 . British Library cyber attack explained: What you need to know . 16 January 2024 . . en . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116013818/https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/British-Library-cyber-attack-explained-What-you-need-to-know . live .
10. News: Banfield-Nwachi . Mabel . 31 October 2023 . British Library suffering major technology outage after cyber-attack . 15 January 2024 . . en-GB . 0261-3077 . 8 November 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231108142221/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/31/british-library-suffering-major-technology-outage-after-cyber-attack . live .
11. Web site: Adams . Geraldine Kendall . 20 December 2023 . Museums on alert following British Library cyber attack . 23 December 2023 . . en-US . 23 December 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231223000618/https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/2023/12/museums-on-alert-following-british-library-cyber-attack/ . live .
12. Web site: Uddin . Rafe . Thomas . Daniel . 5 January 2024 . British Library to burn through reserves to recover from cyber attack . 16 January 2024 . . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115449/https://www.ft.com/content/4be5d468-0cc3-4881-a5fb-b5d0163de93e . live .
13. News: Gross . Jenny . 15 January 2024 . Months After Cyberattack, British Library Crawls Back Online . 16 January 2024 . . en-US . 0362-4331 . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115449/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/arts/british-library-cyberattack.html . live .
14. News: Sherwood . Harriet . 15 January 2024 . British Library begins restoring digital services after cyber-attack . 16 January 2024 . . en-GB . 0261-3077 . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115450/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/15/british-library-begins-restoring-digital-services-after-cyber-attack . live .
15. News: Nanji . Noor . 15 January 2024 . British Library starts restoring services online after hack . 15 January 2024 . . en-GB . 15 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240115194015/https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67976183 . live .
16. News: Simpson . Craig . 15 January 2024 . British Library restoring online services after cyber attack . 16 January 2024 . . en-GB . 0307-1235 . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115449/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/15/british-library-rhysida-hack-restores-online-services/ . live .
17. Web site: Keating . Roly . Learning lessons from the cyber-attack . Knowledge Matters blog . British Library . 8 March 2024 . 8 March 2024.
18. Web site: Learning from the cyber-attack: British Library cyber incident review . British Library . 8 March 2024 . 18 . PDF . 8 March 2024.
19. Web site: Restoring our services – 30 July 2024 update . blogs.bl.uk.
20. News: Barnett . David . 6 January 2024 . Richard Osman among authors missing royalties amid ongoing cyber-attack on British Library . 16 January 2024 . . en-GB . 0029-7712 . 16 January 2024 . https://web.archive.org/web/20240116115449/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/06/authors-missing-borrowing-royalties-british-library-cyber-attack . live .
21. Web site: Sorry we can't find that page . 2024-02-29 . British Library (bl.uk).