Lady Gaga, Madonna, Nicki Minaj and more have had their data stolen by hackers | NME

A swathe of A-listers including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Nicki Minaj and Bruce Springsteen have had their data stolen by a hacker group. HBO‘s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver and Facebook were also purportedly on the hit list.

New York-based media and entertainment law firm Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks confirmed to Variety yesterday (May 11) that its internal data security was compromised by a ransomware attack. The confidential information stolen by the hackers include contracts, nondisclosure agreements, phone numbers, email addresses and private correspondence.

The data heist was conducted by hacker group REvil, which also operates under the alias Sodinokibi. First news of the security breach surfaced last weekend on dark web forums, when the group uploaded an excerpt of a contract for Madonna’s 2019-20 Madame X tour with Live Nation as proof.

Ransomware attacks involve a situation where hackers usually demand a ransom from their victims, under the threat of releasing the stolen data to the public. It is not currently known what REvil/Sodinokibi are demanding.

The information the hacker group have released so far “is simply a warning shot”, threat analyst Brett Callow told Variety on May 9.

“It’s the equivalent of a kidnapper sending a pinky finger. The implicit threat is that if the firm doesn’t pay the cyber-criminals, the group will publish whatever other data they managed to steal, probably in instalments,” he said.