On Saturday, US President Joe Biden said there is no confidence in Washington about whether the Russian government is involved in a recent sophisticated ransomware attack.
Thousands of victims in about 17 countries have been affected by “the single biggest global ransomware attack on record”, Politico has reported, accusing the hacker group REvil of being involved in the breach.
The US news outlet cited cybersecurity firm Sophos as saying that “a broad array of businesses and public agencies” were damaged by Friday’s attack, “apparently on all continents, including in financial services, travel and leisure, and the public sector”.
The ransomware breach rode roughshod over most of the Swedish grocery chain Coop’s 800 stores, as well as the country’s pharmacy and gas station chains, plus the state railway and the public broadcaster SVT, according to Politico.
Also affected were several thousand customers of a German IT services company and two such firms in the Netherlands, VelzArt and Hoppenbrouwer Techniek. Ross McKerchar, chief information security officer at Sophos, for his part, told Poltico that “we haven’t seen evidence of data theft, but it’s still early on and only time will tell if the attackers resort to playing this card in an effort to get victims to pay”.
Fred Voccola, CEO of the breached software company Kaseya, claimed that Friday’s attack affected mostly small businesses like “dental practices, architecture firms, plastic surgery centres, libraries, things like that”.
Voccola additionally referred to what he described as an “extraordinary level of sophistication” pertaining to the attack launched by a REvil affiliate with supposed ties to Russian hackers, according to Politico.
Read More: Details of ‘Biggest Global Ransomware Attack on Record’ Revealed
