As many as 1,500 companies worldwide were hit by a ransomware attack on Kaseya, a U.S.-based information technology firm, a report from Reuters reported Monday (July 5).
Due to the nature of the attack, in which those primarily victimized were mostly customers of Kaseya’s customers, it had become more difficult to analyze the exact fallout.
The hackers who claimed responsibility for the attack had demanded a ransom of $70 million to restore data to those businesses affected.
Kaseya, which gives IT tools to companies outsourcing shops, including companies that normally deal in back-office work for small companies, saw some of its work subverted on Friday (July 2) as the attack hit. In the attack, the hackers able to paralyze hundreds of businesses.
The reports say most of the businesses affected were small concerns like dentist offices or accountants. Reuters said that the attack was particularly harsh on Sweden. There, hundreds of supermarkets were forced to close down because the attack left their cash registers inoperable.
And in New Zealand, the attack also knocked out schools’ and kindergartens’ computers.
Another report from Financial Times (FT) found that the attack hit around 1,000 companies worldwide. According to the FT, the attack looked thus far to be one of the largest supply chain attacks to date.
According to cybersecurity group Huntress Labs, 20 compromised managed service providers saw over 1,000 clients falling victim to the hack.
Among the affected was Sweden’s Coop, which had to close all of its locations except for five of them as of Saturday (July 3).
Cyber threats have been more omnipresent since the pandemic, with new efforts to combat the problem, including Microsoft’s with Worldline, intended to help mitigate fraud risks. The companies cited the stats that there have been as much as $12 billion in estimated global fraud losses.
