A group called “REvil cybercrime” posted a ransom note on its blog. Hackers demand 70 million dollars in cryptocurrency bitcoin for providing the “master key” to all compromised computers.
Experts from the American company Recorded Future dealing with cybersecurity believe that the blog post is genuine. The group’s website has been around for a year.
In one of the largest ransom-demand hacking attacks since Friday afternoon (2.7.2021), the computer systems of thousands of companies around the world may have been paralyzed. IN USA the problem affected at least 200 companies. The attack also had repercussions in Europe. In Sweden, the supermarket chain COOP had to close 800 stores due to blocked checkouts.
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Hackers: Over a million computers
According to the German BSI office – responsible for information security – the hacker attack also affected thousands of computers in Germany. One of the affected IT service providers, which has many thousands of systems from various clients under its care, has already applied. It is possible that further reports will be received by BSI.
The “REvil” group exploited a vulnerability in the US IT service provider Kaseya. In this process, entire billing systems were blocked by hacked encryption software. “REvil” claims that over a million computers were infected. So far, there is no assessment of the extent of the damage by independent experts.
Traces lead to Russia
Kaseya herself reported that fewer than 40 customers were affected by the issue. Among them, however, there were service providers who themselves have many customers. This had a kind of domino effect.
Kaseya has over 36,000 customers. With its VSA software, companies manage software updates in computer systems. Thus, hacking into VSA software opens many doors for hackers.
The very next day after the attack, US President Joe Biden ordered the intelligence services to conduct an investigation. “The first impression was that the Russian government is not behind it, but we are not sure yet,” Biden said.
IT security experts attributed the attack to the “REvil” hacker group on the basis of the software code. The “REvil” group, located by experts in Russia, was behind the attack on the world’s largest meat company, JBS, a few weeks ago. As a result, the company had to close plants in the US and other countries for several days. The company paid the attackers the equivalent of $ 11 million in cryptocurrencies.
(RTR, DPA/dom)
The article comes from the site German wave.
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