White House reaching out to identified ransomware victims to provide assistance

The White House on July 4 said that it was reaching out to victims of a wide-ranging ransomware outbreak centred on a Florida-based IT company. According to a press release, the deputy national security leader for cyber Anne Neuberger said that the US government has been working across the interagency to assess the Kaseya ransomware incident and assist in the response. Neuberger added that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber arm will reach out to identified victims in a bid to provide assistance based upon an assessment of national risk. 

The press note read, “We urge anyone who believes their systems have been compromised in the Kaseya ransomware incident to immediately report to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at https://www.IC3.gov”. 

It added, “The FBI and CISA will reach out to identified victims to provide assistance based upon an assessment of national risk”. 

A computing network management tool by the Florida based IT Firm was targeted into a fresh series of cyber-attacks. Kaseya describes itself as a leading provider of IT and security management services to small- and medium-sized businesses. According to Cybersecurity firm Huntress Labs, it was a ransomware attack, which typically involves locking away data in systems using encryption. In such cases, companies have to pay again to gain access to it. At present, Huntress Labs along with employees from Kesaya are investigating to find the “root cause” of the attack.

Over 200 businesses hit by ransomware attack

It is worth mentioning that the full impact of the intrusion at Kaseya is still coming into focus, in part because the affected Kaseya software tool is used by so-called managed service providers, outsourcing shops that other businesses use to handle their back-office IT work, like installing updates. Targets of the cyber-attack included schools, small public-sector bodies, travel and leisure organizations, credit unions and accountants. Huntress Labs reported that at least 200 businesses in the US “have been encrypted”. 

Meanwhile, in a news interview recently, FBI Director Christopher Wray compared the ransomware threats as similar to security challenges posed by the largest crime scenes in FBI history, the 9/11 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans and overseas nationals. Highlighting the potential threat posed by cyberterrorism that had partaken in the attacks of 9/11—which the FBI probed under the code name “PENTTBOM,” Wray told WSJ,  “There are a lot of parallels, there’s a lot of importance, and a lot of focus by us on disruption and prevention,” as he pointed to the Russian hackers. There are at least 100 different malicious software variants that exist, every single one was responsible for multiple ransomware attacks in the US, Wray said in a report. 

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