House sales and purchases across the UK have been disrupted by a cyber attack affecting several conveyancing companies.
CTS, an infrastructure services provider specializing in the legal sector, confirmed in a statement that it suffered a service outage caused by a cyber incident.
The company said the cyberattack affected part of the services it offers to some of its customers.
The outage reportedly affected up to 200 law firms that use CTS services. This prevents conveyancing companies from accessing the systems needed to progress property transactions.
Many UK-based law firms, including O’Neill Patient, Talbots Law and Taylor Rose MW, have issued statements informing clients that they are “currently experiencing service difficulties due to a technical outage affecting several organizations in the legal sector.
The incident threatens to significantly delay many discussions and finalizations that are scheduled to take place today.
CTS said it was working with third-party expertsincluding a world-leading forensics company, to help investigate the incident and restore its services.
“While we are confident that we will be able to restore services, we are unable to give a precise timeline for a full restoration. We will continue to communicate directly with those of our customers who are affected by the service outage, providing regular updates on the status of our service restoration work and our investigations into the incident,” wrote the Company.
Commenting on the story, Mike Newman, CEO of My1Login, noted that delays in the home buying and selling process could cause significant personal harm to those affected.
He added that the incident demonstrates the dangers posed by increasingly interconnected supply chains, where a breach of a single organization can potentially impact hundreds or even thousands of businesses.
“It appears that estate agents and conveyancing agents are being impacted by the attack on CTS, highlighting the difficulties of being so reliant on third-party software. All of a sudden everything stops, it’s not just the target of the attack that suffers the consequences,” Newman said.