Complicating the response is that it happened at the start of the Fourth of July weekend in the U.S., when most corporate IT teams aren’t fully staffed.<\/b>
\nBusinesses rushed Saturday to contain a ransomware attack that has paralyzed their computer networks, a situation complicated in the U.S. by offices lightly staffed at the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend. In Sweden, most of the grocery chain Coop\u2019s 800 stores were unable to open because their cash registers weren\u2019t working, according to SVT, the country\u2019s public broadcaster. The Swedish State Railways and a major local pharmacy chain were also affected. Cybersecurity experts say the REvil gang, a major Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate, appears to be behind the attack that targeted a software supplier called Kaseya, using its network-management package as a conduit to spread the ransomware through cloud-service providers. Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola said in a statement that the company believes it has identified the source of the vulnerability and will \u201crelease that patch as quickly as possible to get our customers back up and running.\u201d John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs said he was aware of a number of managed-services providers \u2013 companies that host IT infrastructure for multiple customers \u2013 being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers. \u201cIt\u2019s reasonable to think this could potentially be impacting thousands of small businesses,\u201d said Hammond, basing his estimate on the service providers reaching out to his company for assistance and comments on Reddit showing how others are responding. Voccola said fewer than 40 of Kaseya\u2019s customers were known to be affected, but the ransomware could still be affecting hundreds more companies that rely on Kaseya\u2019s clients that provide broader IT services. Voccola said the problem is only affecting its \u201con-premise\u201d customers, which means organizations running their own data centers. It\u2019s not affecting its cloud-based services running software for customers, though Kaseya also shut down those servers as a precaution, he said. The company added in a statement Saturday that \u201ccustomers who experienced ransomware and receive a communication from the attackers should not click on any links \u2013 they may be weaponized.\u201d Gartner analyst Katell Thielemann said it\u2019s clear that Kaseya quickly sprang to action, but it\u2019s less clear whether their affected clients had the same level of preparedness. \u201cThey reacted with an abundance of caution,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the reality of this event is it was architected for maximum impact, combining a supply chain attack with a ransomware attack.\u201d Supply chain attacks are those that typically infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically. Complicating the response is that it happened at the start of a major holiday weekend in the U.S., when most corporate IT teams aren\u2019t fully staffed. That could also leave those organizations unable to address other security vulnerabilities, such a dangerous Microsoft bug affecting software for print jobs, said James Shank, of threat intelligence firm Team Cymru. \u201cCustomers of Kaseya are in the worst possible situation,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re racing against time to get the updates out on other critical bugs.\u201d Shank said \u201cit\u2019s reasonable to think that the timing was planned\u201d by hackers for the holiday. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement 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 \u201cfollow Kaseya\u2019s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately.\u201d Kaseya runs what\u2019s called a virtual system administrator, or VSA, that\u2019s used to remotely manage and monitor a customer\u2019s network. The privately held Kaseya is based in Dublin, Ireland, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami. REvil, the group most experts have tied to the attack, was the same ransomware provider that the FBI linked to an attack on JBS SA, a major global meat processor, amid the Memorial Day holiday weekend in May. Active since April 2019, the group 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\u2019s share of ransoms. The Brazil-based meat company said it paid the equivalent of a $11 million ransom to the hackers, escalating calls by U.S. law enforcement to bring such groups to justice. Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page. Enter your email and password to access comments. Forgot Password? Don’t have a Talk profile? Create one. Invalid username\/password. 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