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Russian speaking hackers targeted US-based IT company Kaseya over the last week, resulting in a data breach of an estimated 800 to 1,500 businesses.
US-based IT firm Kaseya was the target of a ransomware attack over the last week, which saw the data of between 800 to 1,500 businesses encrypted by a group of Russian speaking hackers. The hackers have demanded a US$70 million ransom for the decryption of the data, with analysts speculating Russian hacking group REvil responsible for the attack.
Kaseya offers IT solutions to nearly 40,000 companies globally.
According to several releases on the company's website, the hack was limited to few Kaseya customers, however impacted numerous downstream clients.
“Kaseya’s VSA product has unfortunately been the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack. Due to our teams’ fast response, we believe that this has been localised to a very small number of on-premises customers only," it said.
Though, they “understand the total impact thus far has been to fewer than 1,500 downstream businesses”.
University of Oxford cyber security professor Ciaran Martin suggested to the AFP that the Kaseya attack may constitute the world’s largest ransomware attack.
“It's probably the biggest ransomware attack of all time. Because of the nature of the attack there's still a lot of uncertainty over its impact,” he said.
The response to the attack was felt across the globe, with hundreds of Swedish grocers shutting down and over 100 New Zealand kindergartens forced offline.
In response to the attack, President Biden commented that he has “directed the full resources … of the government to assist in the response”.
The recent attack comes following bilateral discussions between President Biden and President Putin about the growing threat of state aligned hacking.
Of the bilateral discussions, president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass in Project Syndicate wrote, “What put this issue squarely on the agenda of the Biden–Putin meeting is that Russia has grown increasingly aggressive in cyberspace, whether by creating false accounts on social media to influence American politics or by gaining access to critical infrastructure, such as power plants.”
[Related: Russian submarine agency hacked, attackers allegedly Chinese backed]
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