Major ransomware attack forces Swedish grocery store chain halt its operations

The ransomware attack against U.S. tech provider forced to shut down operations of the Swedish grocery store and all its 800 stores as cash registers of the stores stopped working. This ransomware attack is the largest attack recorded until now. It has spread across the world threating firms demanding millions of dollars.

The American software company was attacked which followed the unusual closure of the major food retailer. The highly criticized and ransomware gang, REvil is suspected of attacking the Kaseya’s desktop management tool VSA. The REvil gang is suspected of pushing a malicious update on the system infecting the management tool VSA that serves thousands of businesses.

Huntress Labs, the security solutions provider was first to sound the alarm of the infections. It informed that thousands of small companies might have been victimized.Kaseya informed that 40 of its customers have been directly impacted. It denied talking on how the infected system further spread the malicious software to others. After the attack the FBI said it was investigating the attack in coordination with US security agency CISA. The agency urged the users of the tool to follow Kaseya’s guidance and halt its operations with the VSA servers with immediate effect.

The business that were impacted had files encrypted and were left with electronic messages demanding ransom payments of millions of dollars. According to some experts, the attackers aimed at spreading the infection as fast as possible while employees were at a long weekend holidays and away from job.