Saturday, July 03, 2021

Ransomware cyberattack hits hundreds of US businesses

US IT company Kaseya urged its customers to shut down their servers after hackers smuggled ransomware onto its network. Such attacks infiltrate widely-used software and demand ransom to regain access.



A cybersecurity firm said the REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack

US technology company Kaseya urged customers to shut down their servers on Friday after cyberattackers smuggled ransomware onto its network platform.

The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack, said John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs. He added that the criminals used Kaseya's network-management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud-service providers.

Huntress Labs said in a Reddit forum that it was working with partners targeted in the attack, and that some 200 businesses "have been encrypted."

Kaseya said Friday evening that it had limited the attack to a "very small percentage of our customers" who use its software, "currently estimated at fewer than 40 worldwide."

Ransomware attacks typically involve locking data in systems using encryption and making companies pay to regain access. Such attacks infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically.

Unclear how many customers affected

"We are in the process of investigating the root cause of the incident with an abundance of caution but we recommend that you immediately shutdown your VSA server until you receive further notice from us," Kaseya said in a message shared in a Reddit forum. "It's critical that you do this immediately, because one of the first things the attacker does is shut off administrative access to the VSA."

It was not immediately clear how many Kaseya customers might be affected. A virtual systems administrator, or VSA, is the company's main offering, which allows companies to manage networks of computers and printers from a single point. The company's US headquarters are in Florida and its international headquarters are in Ireland.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said that it was "taking action to understand and address the recent supply-chain ransomware attack" against Kaseya VSA and the service providers using the software.

The agency urged businesses to follow Kaseya's guidance and quickly shut down VSA servers to avoid having systems compromised. Active since April 2019, REvil provides ransomware-as-a-service, meaning it develops network-paralyzing software and leases it to affiliates who infect targets and earn most of the ransoms.

The group is among ransomware gangs that steal data from targets before activating the ransomware.

The UN Security Council this week held its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries' key infrastructure. Multiple US companies, including the computer group SolarWinds, the Colonial oil pipeline and meat producer JBS have recently been targeted by ransomware attacks. The FBI has blamed those attacks on hackers based in Russian territory.

lc/rc (AP, AFP)

Ransomware hits hundreds of US companies, security firm says

By FRANK BAJAK, ERIC TUCKER and MATT O'BRIEN
today


FILE - This Feb 23, 2019, file photo shows the inside of a computer in Jersey City, 
N.J. A ransomware attack paralyzed the networks of at least 200 U.S. companies 
on Friday, July 2, 2021, according to a cybersecurity researcher whose company
 was responding to the incident. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — A ransomware attack paralyzed the networks of at least 200 U.S. companies on Friday, according to a cybersecurity researcher whose company was responding to the incident.

The REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack, said John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs. He said the criminals targeted a software supplier called Kaseya, using its network-management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud-service providers. Other researchers agreed with Hammond’s assessment.

“Kaseya handles large enterprise all the way to small businesses globally, so ultimately, (this) has the potential to spread to any size or scale business,” Hammond said in a direct message on Twitter. “This is a colossal and devastating supply chain attack.

Such cyberattacks typically infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically.

It was not immediately clear how many Kaseya customers might be affected or who they might be. Kaseya urged customers in a statement on its website to immediately shut down servers running the affected software. It said the attack was limited to a “small number” of its customers.

Brett Callow, a ransomware expert at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said he was unaware of any previous ransomware supply-chain attack on this scale. There have been others, but they were fairly minor, he said.

“This is SolarWinds with ransomware,” he said. He was referring to a Russian cyberespionage hacking campaign discovered in December that spread by infecting network management software to infiltrate U.S. federal agencies and scores of corporations.

Cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, said he was already working with six companies hit by the ransomware. It’s no accident that this happened before the Fourth of July weekend, when IT staffing is generally thin, he added.

“There’s zero doubt in my mind that the timing here was intentional,” he said.

Hammond of Huntress said he was aware of four managed-services providers — companies that host IT infrastructure for multiple customers — being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers. He said thousand of computers were hit.

“We currently have three Huntress partners who are impacted with roughly 200 businesses that have been encrypted,” Hammond said.

Hammond wrote on Twitter: “Based on everything we are seeing right now, we strongly believe this (is) REvil/Sodinikibi.” The FBI linked the same ransomware provider to a May attack on JBS SA, a major global meat processer.

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement late Friday that it is closely monitoring the situation and working with the FBI to collect more information about its impact.

CISA urged anyone who might be affected to “follow Kaseya’s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately.” Kaseya runs what’s called a virtual system administrator, or VSA, that’s used to remotely manage and monitor a customer’s network.

The privately held Kaseya says it is based in Dublin, Ireland, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami. The Miami Herald recently described it as “one of Miami’s oldest tech companies” in a report about its plans to hire as many as 500 workers by 2022 to staff a recently acquired cybersecurity platform.

Brian Honan, an Irish cybersecurity consultant, said by email Friday that “this is a classic supply chain attack where the criminals have compromised a trusted supplier of companies and have abused that trust to attack their customers.”

He said it can be difficult for smaller businesses to defend against this type of attack because they “rely on the security of their suppliers and the software those suppliers are using.”

The only good news, said Williams, of Rendition Infosec, is that “a lot of our customers don’t have Kaseya on every machine in their network,” making it harder for attackers to move across an organization’s computer systems.

That makes for an easier recovery, he said.

Active since April 2019, the group known as REvil provides ransomware-as-a-service, meaning it develops the network-paralyzing software and leases it to so-called affiliates who infect targets and earn the lion’s share of ransoms.

REvil is among ransomware gangs that steal data from targets before activating the ransomware, strengthening their extortion efforts. The average ransom payment to the group was about half a million dollars last year, said the Palo Alto Networks cybersecurity firm in a recent report.

Some cybersecurity experts predicted that it might be hard for the gang to handle the ransom negotiations, given the large number of victims — though the long U.S. holiday weekend might give it more time to start working through the list.

___

Bajak reported from Boston; O’Brien contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.

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