The British Library: Cyber Attack

This week I was checking links in our Philatelic Resources, Societies and Clubs links at the bottom of our webpage. 

Sadly, the Ship Stamp Club has closed. But more worrying is that The British Library, which was hit by a cyber attack in November 2023, is still suffering major system disruption. As a result our link to their informative Philately section is not working and directs visitors to a temporary page.

The British Library link has been retained in our list in the hope that their systems will be back online at some point this year. It is a timely reminder to us all to take sensible precautions with our login and security details at all times, even when we are engaged with our philatelic interests.

The British Library states; 

"We're continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack. The outage is still affecting our website, online systems and services, as well as some onsite services, however our buildings are still open as usual.

We anticipate restoring more services over the coming months, but disruption to certain services is expected to persist for longer...

We have...[published a paper] about the attack. Its goal is to share our understanding of what happened and to help others learn from our experience.

In November the attackers released some of our data onto the dark web including some personal user information. We've contacted our users to alert them to this incident and to offer advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on how to protect themselves, including updating their passwords on other systems.

Because our systems are still unavailable, you can't change the password for our services. However, if you use the same password for non-British Library services, we recommend that you change it as a precaution.

The NCSC offers advice on staying secure online, including how to create a strong password, as well as specific guidance for individuals who may have been impacted by a data breach.

Analysing the data is likely to take several months. Should we find specific information has been compromised, we will alert anyone affected as soon as we can. We are continuing to collaborate with the Metropolitan Police and professional cybersecurity advisors, and are receiving support from the NCSC...

We're really sorry for the ongoing disruption to our systems and services and we'll provide further updates when we can. Thank you for bearing with us during this ongoing investigation."

Be careful out there...

Postmaster