British Library cyberattack (2023)
An October 2023 ransomware attack that took most of the UK national library's systems offline for months, after it refused to pay a 20 bitcoin ransom.
The Rhysida group encrypted and destroyed some of the library's servers, then published the stolen data after the library refused to pay, in line with UK policy that discourages public bodies from paying. The library then published an unusually candid report on the causes: a likely entry point without multifactor authentication, and legacy infrastructure that could not be restored as it was and had to be rebuilt. The case illustrates technical debt as a loss driver: the cost comes from the intrusion and from the impossibility of returning to the prior state. It is often cited in the debate over the UK plan to ban ransom payments in the public sector.
Attacked on October 28, 2023, the British Library refused the 20 bitcoin ransom, about 600,000 pounds, and some 600 gigabytes of its data were posted online in November. Its March 2024 report put the cost of rebuilding at about 6 to 7 million pounds, nearly 40 percent of its reserves.
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