Kaseya ‘Ransomware Apocalypse’
Call it a “ransomware apocalypse,” or maybe just a huge pain in the ass. Whatever you want to call it, the malicious cyberattack on global IT provider Kaseya just ahead of the July 4 weekend has certainly screwed up a lot of stuff for a lot of people, affecting potentially as many as 1,500 businesses all over the world, bringing down local governments, shuttering a popular Swedish chain of supermarkets, and squeezing an already strained U.S.-Russia relationship at the worst possible time.
The attack, which infected a popular Kaseya software product called VSA, was used to spread malware to dozens of the company’s customers—many of which were managed service providers, or MSPs, firms that help small businesses and government agencies with outsourced IT tasks. As a result, the malware infected the MSPs’ customers, too, resulting in hundreds and hundreds of businesses being affected.
The cybercriminal gang behind the attack, the Russian-speaking group REvil, initially asked for $70 million in return for a “universal decryptor” that would unlock all of the files that the single attack has frozen worldwide. By mid-July, however, the group appeared to have gone underground, conveniently disappearing after making a mess of truly global proportions.
Yeah, even by recent standards, this attack is big—potentially one of the biggest of its kind the world has ever seen.
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