Chhavideep Singh
Source: nypost.com
The number of ransomware attacks in the technology industry are increasing by the day and all of them are pretty sophisticated and hard to break free. Recently, a unit of Toshiba Corp. was hacked by the DarkSide ransomware group which is well known for its attacks in the past.
The attack hit right before the Japanese conglomerate company was about to announce a strategic review. Overshadowing the announcement, the ransomware attack at this peak time have had the company’s shareholders activists to seek out suitors, as mentioned in a report by Business Insurance.
According to recent reports, DarkSide is also speculated to be behind the massive Colonial Pipeline attack. It is a widely popular and dangerous ransomware attack group whose latest target is the Toshiba Group which is currently valued at USD 2.3 billion.
Takashi Yoshikawa, a senior malware analyst at Mitsui Bussan Secure Directions says that within DarkSide, there are somewhere around 30 groups that are constantly trying to hack companies all around the world.
Technology companies all around the world have been facing threats of ransomware attacks and hacks. Analysts believe that the ongoing work from home culture has opened these companies to vulnerabilities.
However, in the case of Toshiba, the unit confirms that only a limited work data had been lost to the attacks. Office servers are said to be equipped with more security and home networks are not that secure, these systems are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
During scrutiny, analysts mentioned that all multiple websites of the DarkSide ransomware group were inaccessible and this confirms that it is the group behind the ransomware attack.
Recently, Irish Healthcare Service was also under a pretty serious ransomware attack where Health Service Executive had to order all systems to be forced shut to take precautions against the ransomware attack. Users were allegedly logged out of their own systems with all healthcare data at risk, the COVID-19 vaccinations continued offline while all online services were completely in the dark.
Anyhow, the United States Colonial Pipeline hack case was also a major incident to which the U.S. analysts have found leads to DarkSide that the ransomware attack software was one distributed by DarkSide.
Toshiba was reportedly setting up a review committee to dismiss a USD 20 billion private bid from CVC capital. The company had also reportedly appointed UBS as its financial advisor. The Japanese company mentioned that the review was designed to help the board of directors come up with a new business plan to be put forward by the management by the month of October, but the recent ransomware attack disrupted these plans and further investigation is on the run.