Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Kronos ransomware fallout: Electrolux workers still not receiving full pay

by Edvardas Mikalauskas
29 December 2021


It appears that the aftershock effects of the ransomware attack on Kronos are still felt by real people who are not getting their full paychecks weeks after the incident took place.

Employees at an Electrolux facility in South Carolina claim that they haven’t been paid in full for about two weeks, according to a WSPA 7News report.

The report comes about two weeks after Kronos, a major HR and payroll service provider, suffered a ransomware attack that prevented the company’s clients from accessing staff management and payroll processing services.

According to WSPA 7News, Electrolux North America released a statement on Monday about the Kronos ransomware incident. “Kronos, our time clock supplier, is experiencing a global systems issue and is working to address it as quickly as possible. Upon learning this news, we immediately moved to manually recording employee work hours at the factory to ensure our employees are accurately paid, including overtime,” said the company.

One Electrolux employee told WSPA 7News that she hasn’t received a paycheck for the week of December 13 through 17.

Due to the disruptions caused by the Kronos ransomware attack, teams at the Electrolux facility had to resort to putting down their time clock data on paper. “We had to manually do it on a piece of paper and write everybody’s names down, and what time they came in and what time they left,” another employee told the reporter.

Kronos, the HR company that suffered the ransomware attack, claims that the initial forensic investigation shows the incident affected Kronos Private Cloud, the portion of UKG business where UKG Workforce Central, UKG TeleStaff, Healthcare Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions are deployed.

Other high-profile Kronos clients who rely on services affected by the attack include Tesla, Puma, Sainsbury's, and the City of Cleveland.
Golden age for ransomware gangs

Pundits talk of a ransomware gold rush, with the number of attacks increasing over 90% in the first half of 2021 alone.

The prevalence of ransomware has forced governments to take multilateral action against the threat. It's likely a combined effort allowed to push the infamous REvil and BlackMatter cartels offline and arrest the Cl0p ransomware cartel members.

Gangs, however, either rebrand or form new groups. Most recently, LockBit 2.0 was the most active ransomware group with a whopping list of 203 victims in Q3 of 2021 alone.




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