Hacker attack!

Opinion researcher was the victim of a hacker attack

Cyber criminals called "Qilin" are said to have hacked Kalina's systems.(Bild: chinnapong/stock.adobe.com; ryanking999/stock.adobe.com)

Josef "Joe" Kalina - opinion researcher, advertising professional, communications guru. His good connections to politics, authorities and business have now apparently made the 66-year-old the target of cyber criminals. The servers of his Viennese PR agency UNIQUE Relations were hacked - 49.47 gigabytes of data were stolen and the jack-of-all-trades was blackmailed.

The attackers are said to be the group "Qilin", who usually rent out their software to plunder networks with lucrative data sets. In the current case, the "successful attack" on Kalina's company was reported on the darknet on November 5, 2023.

Employee raised the alarm early in the morning
"We got the matter under control quickly," asserted Josef Kalina in an interview with the "Krone" newspaper after an employee was unable to access any documents or drives early in the morning and raised the alarm. "We immediately reported this to the police and data protection authority and called in a cyber specialist."

Josef Kalina(Bild: Tomschi Peter)

The fact is, the virtual intruders demanded a ransom from the Viennese entrepreneur - bitcoins to be precise - to prevent the - also politically sensitive - documents from being sold on to the highest bidder. But nothing was paid, says Kalina. "We make daily system backups and were able to fend off further attacks. As a result, nothing was published that was compromising in any way."

We have not paid a "ransom". And nothing was released that would be compromising.

Josef Kalina, Unternehmer und renommierter Meinungsforscher

"These bombings are widespread"
Kalina does not believe that this is a targeted cyber attack. "There is an organization behind it. This is about widespread bombings."

Cyber criminals called "Qilin" are said to have hacked Kalina's systems.(Bild: chinnapong/stock.adobe.com; ryanking999/stock.adobe.com)

Domestic security expert Cornelius Granig points out that the risk of cyber attacks being ordered by criminals is particularly high in the super election year 2024 and warns: "Encrypt your sensitive data and strengthen your security precautions to prevent criminals from misusing the data."