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About 200 US businesses have been hit by a "colossal" ransomware attack, according to a cyber-security firm.
Huntress Labs said the hack targeted Florida-based IT company Kaseya before spreading through corporate networks that use its software.
Kaseya said in a statement on its own website that it was investigating a "potential attack".
Huntress Labs said it believed the Russia-linked REvil ransomware gang was responsible.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, a federal agency, said in a statement that it was taking action to address the attack.
The cyber-breach emerged on Friday afternoon as companies across the US were clocking off for the long Independence Day weekend.
The two big things that are keeping cyber-security professionals up at night lately are ransomware attacks and supply chain attacks. This latest incident combines both nightmares into one big Independence Holiday weekend-ruining event for hundreds of US IT teams.
Ransomware is the scourge of the internet. Multiple organised criminal gangs are constantly attempting to gain access to computer networks to hold them hostage. The rate of attack is relentless but it can take a lot of time and effort on the criminals part to successfully hijack one victim's computer system.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Saturday July 03 2021, @09:34PM
It doesn't. Quite the contrary, it will increase the number of bugs in software, simply by virtue of there being more software.
But at the same time any bug in any of these systems will have a much smaller impact on everyone. It's a bit like with any monoculture. Yes, if you have only one kind of tree in a forest, there will be far fewer pests to consider because all the ones that only affect the other tree types will simply not exist in your forest. But if you have an outbreak of one such pests, your forest is gone.
Bark beetles are a really huge threat in one of the areas I lived in. Mostly because they decided that monocultures of fast growing spruces is a good idea.