Are you a retailer, hospital, and financial institution?
If you have POS terminals, computer-controlled diagnostic equipment. or even ATM machines, you will tend to be the target of choice for the hackers of the world. Of course, you're not the only targets. The simple truth is that any company can find itself in the cross hairs of a hacker.
The most recent victim is Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte. In addition to shutting down manufacturing operations in Taiwan the attack also took a number of the company's web-based systems. They include its online support and the Taiwanese website itself.
The investigation into the matter is ongoing. The early indications are that the company fell victim to the RansomEXX strain of ransomware. In addition to locking files on a number of Gigabyte's network devices the hackers made off with some 112 GB of data. The hackers have published portions of this data on their own website on the Dark Web as proof that they were indeed behind the attack.
Gigabyte isn't the only recent target
The RansomEXX strain has an interesting history. It began life in 2018 as a strain called Defray. For the first couple of years of its life it gained little traction among the hackers of the world. It wasn't used in many high-profile attacks.
It seemed to go dormant and re-emerged in 2020 as RansomEXX with a raft of new capabilities. It is not clear whether it was abandoned and picked up by a new hacker group or the original Defray authors used their initial experiments to refine the code. In its current form RansomEXX is a dangerous threat indeed and is capable of infecting both Windows- and Linux-based systems
The group controlling the malware has used it to attack a number of high-profile targets in recent weeks, including:
- The State of Texas Department of Transportation
- The Brazilian Federal Government
- Massachusetts-based IPG Photonics
- And more
My perspective
Be on your guard against this one. You should check that your security software has been updated to meet the danger. Or if already infected...
How to remove RansomEXX
You can just hear Kojak saying: 'Who loves ya, baby"
By Denis Wilson
Thanks for reading this short post. For more tips on thriving with small business technology, check out the other blog posts at DWPIA Blogs. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
I am also a published author and speaker on cloud computing, work@home, and cybersecurity. I work extensively with business and professional associations to provide free small business technology education programs.
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