Thousands of computer systems around the world have been attacked by ransomware, targeted at certain types of systems. This happened just a few days after, how a British derivatives trading operator was hacked in a similar way.
According to French and Italian cybersecurity agencies, their countries were among the victims, as well as Canada and the USA. Officials in Italy are planning a meeting soon, on which the situation will be assessed.
Malicious hackers exploit the vulnerability, which was already known two years ago. The French Computer Emergency Response Team stated, that applying corrections now will not be enough, because hackers could take advantage and "drop malicious code".
Ransomware is a type of malware, which blocks the victim's files, after which the hackers demand a fee for providing the encryption key. LockBit, team, behind last week's attack on ION Trading UK, He stated, that received a ransom and unlocked these files. ION declined to comment., whether the ransom was actually paid.
It is not clear, Has any group claimed responsibility for the latest attack?. According to the US Department of Justice, LockBit has been active since at least January 2020 years and extorted an amount of at least 100 millions of dollars.
According to public reports, recent attacks have targeted a specific vulnerability in some VMware ESXi hypervisors. This allows companies to host virtual machines and run multiple operating systems on a single server..
Vulnerabilities for two years, and it should have been fixed, but it is obvious, that many servers are still not secure — said Stefano Zanero, professor of cybersecurity at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy.
Following a ransomware attack on ION Trading last week, the company issued a statement, which states, that the problem was caused by a cyber incident with VMware servers. Author:The same Mikhail
