Cyber Incident Victim: Debra Katz

On March 6, 2021, the website of attorney Debra Katz’s law firm, Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP (kmblegal.com), was compromised by an unidentified hacker, resulting in its temporary unavailability. The attack occurred early that Saturday morning, disrupting access to the firm’s online presence during a period of heightened public attention. Katz represented Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a high-profile investigation into sexual harassment allegations against the governor. The website’s normal content was replaced with a splash page displaying only the text “AGENT-TEST,” which remained visible for multiple hours while the firm worked to address the breach. This defacement coincided with active media coverage of the Cuomo investigation, though no explicit motive for the attack was disclosed in available reports. The incident directly impacted the firm’s ability to maintain its public-facing communications platform during this critical timeframe.

Service restoration was completed by late Saturday morning, though the specific technical remediation steps taken by the firm were not detailed in public disclosures. The hack forced the temporary takedown of the website, limiting public access to the firm’s information during the outage. No additional compromised systems, data exfiltration, or secondary disruptions beyond the website defacement and downtime were reported. The incident drew media coverage linking it to Katz’s role in the politically sensitive Cuomo investigation but yielded no verified claims of responsibility or disclosed evidence regarding the attacker’s identity. The firm resumed normal website operations without further publicized disruptions following the restoration.