Hackers Demand $70m After Kaseya Ransomware Attack

 

Hackers were on Monday demanding $70 million in bitcoin in exchange for data stolen during a “gargantuan” attack on a US IT company that has shuttered hundreds of Swedish supermarkets.

Researchers believe more than 1,000 companies could have been affected by the attack on Miami-based firm Kaseya, which provides IT services to some 40,000 businesses around the world.

The FBI warned Sunday that the scale of the “ransomware” attack — a form of digital hostage-taking where hackers encrypt victims’ data and then demand money for restored access — is so large that it may be “unable to respond to each victim individually”.

“It’s probably the biggest ransomware attack of all time,” said Ciaran Martin, cybersecurity professor at the University of Oxford.

“Because of the nature of the attack there’s still a lot of uncertainty over its impact,” he stressed.

But he added that because this was a “supply chain attack” — targeting a company serving thousands of firms, many of whom in turn provide IT support to smaller businesses such as car dealerships — the total number of victims was potentially huge.

Sweden’s Coop supermarket chain was among the indirect victims, with its cash registers paralysed since Friday when its IT subcontractor Visma Esscom was hit by the attack.

Most of Coop’s 800 stores were still closed Monday, spokesman Kevin Bell told AFP, with the few hundred that have reopened relying on alternative payment solutions such as customers paying using their smartphones.

Cybersecurity firm ESET said it had identified victims of the hack in at least 17 countries, from South Africa to Britain to Mexico. New Zealand’s education ministry said at least two schools there had been affected.