A large-scale hacker attack on hundreds of corporate networks in the United States has spread to Europe. Swedish supermarket chain Coop, one of the country’s largest grocery stores, closed all of its 800 branches on Saturday. A company spokeswoman said the attack shut down cash register systems.
Sweden’s state railways and pharmacy chain have also reported disruptions. Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist spoke of a very serious attack. “In another geopolitical situation, state representatives can attack us in this way to paralyze society and create chaos,” the minister said on television.
According to the news agency “TT”, the target of the attack in Sweden was software from the American company “Cassia”, which is used in many companies. He had already said on Friday that his VSA software may have been hacked. The tool is used by IT service providers to manage the computer systems of corporate clients. Kaseya recommended that VSA users shut down their servers immediately. Its CEO, Fred Fukulla, said the company believes it has discovered the vulnerability and will fix it as soon as possible.
It is known that fewer than 40 clients of the cassava are known to have been affected, Fukula said. But including IT service providers and their customers, the effects could have been felt by hundreds of companies. The issue only affects organizations that have their own data centers, but Kaseya has also shut down its servers in order for cloud services to be on the safe side.
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Katel Tillman, an analyst at Gartner, said Kaseya reacted with extreme caution, but it wasn’t clear if the company’s customers were ready. The attack is designed to have maximum effect.
According to US security service provider Huntress, eight IT service providers and nearly 200 corporate customers in the US have been affected. “This is a massive and devastating attack on supply chains,” said Huntress Director John Hammond. The company suspects that the Revell group is behind the attack, the effects of which should lead to Russia. The FBI is already using REvil to launch an attack on the world’s largest meat company JBS Responsible for extorting $11 million from hackers.
In the United States, the state and companies are fighting a wave of attacks with extortion software (ransomware). The data of the systems that have been attacked is encrypted. For re-release, hackers demand payments in cryptocurrency. The hackers also extorted millions of dollars from the US oil pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline. An attack on the US software manufacturer SolarWinds, which affected thousands of users, also caused an uproar.
More: ‘Like the Mafia’: US economy suffers from online extortion attacks – Biden government under pressure
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