McDowall Affleck, a Western Australian engineering consultancy whose work includes storage tanks and pipelines, confirmed in early August 2024 that it had experienced a cyber incident. The confirmation followed the appearance of the firm's name on the darknet leak site operated by the RansomHub ransomware group.
RansomHub posted the listing on August 1, 2024 and said the intrusion itself had taken place on July 24. The group claimed to have uploaded roughly 470 gigabytes of material to its own servers, describing it as blueprints and documents from past and current projects, quotation records, insurance paperwork, tender and contract files, client and partner details, and personal information belonging to employees. It threatened to publish the data within days if its demands went unmet.
The company said it had taken steps to secure its systems as soon as the incident was detected and had engaged external forensic specialists to investigate. It notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Western Australia Police Force, told employees and clients, and said it would cooperate with law enforcement and privacy regulators.
McDowall Affleck's client list includes Lendlease, Hitachi and the state agency DevelopmentWA. As of early August the firm had not independently confirmed the volume or contents of the data RansomHub claimed to hold and said it was still assessing the legitimacy of the group's claims. Cyber Daily described the firm as only the second Australian organisation publicly named by RansomHub in 2024.