Hackers Attack Prominent Cosmetic Surgery Clinic in London

Computer hacking (illustrative). (photo credit:REUTERS)
Computer hacking (illustrative). (photo credit:REUTERS)
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Hackers Attack Prominent Cosmetic Surgery Clinic in London

Computer hacking (illustrative). (photo credit:REUTERS)
Computer hacking (illustrative). (photo credit:REUTERS)

A high-profile plastic surgery clinic has said it is "horrified" after hackers allegedly stole data during a cyber-attack. London Bridge Plastic Surgery (LBPS) said its IT experts and police found evidence of the breach.

A group claiming to be behind the breach said it had "terabytes" of data, the Daily Beast news site reported.

According to BBC, the Metropolitan Police is investigating the attack.

The alleged hackers, using the pseudonym The Dark Overlord, said they had obtained photos showing various body parts of clients. Some of these images have been sent to the Daily Beast.

The hackers also claimed that the data contained information about royal families and added that they planned to distribute the patient list and corresponding photos online.

LBPS said in a statement: “We are still working to establish exactly what data has been compromised. We are horrified that they have now targeted our patients.”

A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police said it was notified of a suspected breach on 17 October. LBPS is known to have high-profile clients, including model and TV presenter Katie Price, who recently used her Instagram account to thank the clinic for her facelift.

The Information Commissioner's Office said, "We are aware of this incident and are looking into the details. All organizations are required under data protection law to keep people's personal data safe and secure."

The Dark Overlord has claimed to be behind high-profile data breaches before, including one at US media firm Netflix earlier this year.

In April, 10 episodes of the new series of TV show Orange is the New Black were released online after Netflix refused to pay a ransom.



China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
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China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS

Two Chinese astronauts this week completed a world-record spacewalk of more than nine hours, according to a statement from China's Manned Space Agency, marking another milestone for Beijing's rapidly expanding space program.

The spacewalk, carried out by Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong outside the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit on Tuesday, was at least four minutes longer than the last record set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, according to Reuters.

The two astronauts of China's Shenzhou-19 mission donned their Feitian spacesuits to carry out an array of tasks on the station's exterior, including the installation of space-debris protection devices, China's space agency said.

"They successfully completed all the planned tasks and felt very excited about it," Wu Hao, a staffer from the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, told China Central Television, a state broadcaster.

The former Soviet Union in 1965 became the first nation to carry out a spacewalk. Since then, Russia and the United States have conducted hundreds of such missions, primarily outside the International Space Station for tasks ranging from solar panel installations to materials research.

The first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut occurred in 2008.

China's spacewalking milestone this week comes amid a flurry of other recent cosmic achievements that have boosted Beijing's competitive footing with the United States.

China landed its first rover on Mars in 2021 and earlier this year became the first country to retrieve rock samples from the moon's treacherous far side in its Chang'e-6 mission.

Beijing is targeting 2030 to land its first astronauts on the moon to become the second country after the US to put humans there. Beijing has courted roughly a dozen countries for its International Lunar Research Station program, an effort to build a moon base on the moon's south pole.

That program rivals NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission of 1972.