Cyber attacks

The lender had taken certain systems offline and was working to restore business operations as of Monday morning.

The title insurer said its title data and property records research tools have been restored, as well as its warranty site.

In a filing, the company's subservicing subsidiary Loancare said 1.3 million customers had their data compromised, while in an ongoing situation, customers of fellow title insurer First American find themselves without email or online access after a separate incident last week.

The title company was also attacked in 2019 and joins Fidelity National and Mr. Cooper among recent victims.

Lawyers for the plaintiff maintain the companies should have been on notice of inadequate security measures after a reported data breach in 2022.

To make amends to former and current borrowers, Mr. Cooper is footing the bill for two years of complimentary identity protection services.

While ransomware group Alphv/Blackcat claims to have orchestrated the incident, title insurance company Fidelity National Financial has not yet stated whether confidential data was compromised.

Some of the lender and servicer's systems are offline following the attack on Oct. 31.

The incident occurred in November 2020 when an unauthorized party gained access to company systems and deployed ransomware, resulting in compromise of employees' personal information.

Ransomware gang Cl0p is currently threatening 50 companies with releasing data it stole from them late last month.

The hackers, on their dark web blog, recently threatened to release supposed company and borrower information if the lender did not pay.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alerted staff this week that text messages had been sent to employee personal phone numbers claiming to be from Director Rohit Chopra.

The incident affecting the information of 1,361 customers is a rare disclosure of a data breach from a top mortgage lender and servicer.

The plaintiffs allege that the banks did not catch obvious red flags or implement proper safeguards such as requiring two employees to approve each transaction.

HomeTrust Mortgage disclosed customers' names, addresses and Social Security numbers may have been compromised in the incident.

In response to a raft of recent data breaches, mortgage lenders are implementing a number of measures to protect their clients and themselves.

Increased cybersecurity spending puts an extraordinary squeeze on smaller firms that struggle to maintain revenues amid the origination slowdown.

Chief executives from across the business world are set to join President Biden for a discussion Wednesday on how industry and the federal government can partner to improve cybersecurity in the face of debilitating ransomware and cyberattacks.

Mortgage companies contended with an average of 1,316 fraud attempts per month in 2020, up from 1,280 in the previous year, according to the latest study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

The popular videoconferencing service has been beset by security issues, and some banks have banned employees from using it. Are they overreacting?