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Computer giant Acer hit by $50 million ransomware attack:
Computer giant Acer has been hit by a REvil ransomware attack where the threat actors are demanding the largest known ransom to date, $50,000,000.
Acer is a Taiwanese electronics and computer maker well-known for laptops, desktops, and monitors. Acer employs approximately 7,000 employees and earned $7.8 billion in 2019.
Yesterday, the ransomware gang announced on their data leak site that they had breached Acer and shared some images of allegedly stolen files as proof.
These leaked images are for documents that include financial spreadsheets, bank balances, and bank communications.
Will their new computers ship with ransomware preinstalled?
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Computer Giant Acer Hit by $50 Million Ransomware Attack
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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(1)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @02:20AM (3 children)
China did it!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by looorg on Monday March 22 2021, @02:31AM (2 children)
While a solid choice I would be more inclined to believe it was best Korea ... hrm .. North Korea.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @03:36AM (1 child)
The Norks don't have the technical resources to pull off something like this. China and Russia have both invested heavily into this type of attack but their MOs are different. The Chinese tend to steal, sabotage, and deny while the Russians prefer to extort money. Since this group is doing the latter, I'm betting state-backed Russian Mafia.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Monday March 22 2021, @12:58PM
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm774 [treasury.gov]
Seems most others do believe, or can prove, that the Norks (funny word) do have a very active and capable state sponsored (what isn't in that country?) hacking program.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @02:29AM (5 children)
Save Myanmar's democracy.
Taiwan Numbah Won.
China Numbah 69.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @03:23AM (4 children)
China numbah 44?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anti-aristarchus on Monday March 22 2021, @03:52AM (3 children)
Fat Fat, or 88. 八八 Not the nazi one, just that the number "8" is lucky in Chinese.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by The Mighty Bastard on Monday March 22 2021, @04:44AM (1 child)
Remind me to ban aristarchus later. He's been spamming this site long enough with his leftist bullshit. Fuck him, Zumi, and DeathMonkey.
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by Eratosthenes on Monday March 22 2021, @05:05AM
This is the Mighty Buzzard Blog, after all. Chock full of censorship.
(Score: 2) by Eratosthenes on Tuesday March 23 2021, @07:21AM
Actually, this is correct. Guai Ren!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 22 2021, @02:50PM (7 children)
A backup system needs to make frequent backups. It needs to be fairly invisible. And reliable.
The real test of a backup system is the ability to reliably restore from it.
When a ransomware attack hits, this is when you hope you have good and recent backups.
If everyone can cleanly reinstall, and restore their systems, and restore backups, and the IT dept can keep new attacks out, you may not have to pay ransom. It is key that their IT understands how this attack penetrated their organization to prevent it happening again.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 22 2021, @03:33PM (1 child)
A backup is only good, if you can use it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 22 2021, @03:51PM
That is kind of subtly implied in my 2nd paragraph. :-)
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @03:37PM (4 children)
> If everyone can cleanly reinstall ...
I think you missed this bit?
The ransom is for not making public all sorts of internal business details. If Acer runs a completely above-board and clean ship, then having all their financial details public won't matter...but that seems pretty unlikely. Publication brings with it the very real possibility of public scandal.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 22 2021, @03:52PM (3 children)
I did miss that. Thank you.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @05:40PM (2 children)
What would the world be like if everyone and every company/org/govt had public book keeping? Not bank account numbers, but all the transactions?? This kind of ransom attack could be next to pointless...
I'm part of a small service org that does this--all transactions are on a spreadsheet available for download--transparent accounting (bank details are kept on paper at my end...assume they are online at the bank). Transactions range from USD$20k-$70K/year and no problems so far in 10+ years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @06:38PM (1 child)
Can I see? Where can I download these things?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24 2021, @02:23AM
It's for engineering students. The org collects membership fees, contracts for expensive mechanical testing ($$,$$$), then distributes the test data to the students.
The result is that students get to work with real world, messy, ugly, test data. Much more interesting/challenging than working with textbook numbers that always come out even.
The only reason I'm not telling you the website that hosts the accounting spreadsheet is to save on traffic--cheap web hosting (to minimize org expenses) can't handle a lot of traffic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22 2021, @08:35PM
That's what you dumb fucks get for using Windows! You deserve it. You were happy to participate in the digital slave trade when you thought you were the master. How does it feel to realize you are also the slave?