At the beginning of this month, it came to light that Kaseya, a company that provides IT management software to companies and businesses all over the world faced a massive ransomware attack at the hands of affiliates of the Russian hacker group REvil.
Due to the nature of Kaseya’s software, the hacker group was able to infect hundreds of different company networks, and many individuals found their data encrypted. Now Kaseya has announced that it has obtained a universal decryptor to help customers who still find themselves suffering after the attack.
Kaseya has you covered, finally
You may remember that after the attack REvil took credit and announced that it would be selling a universal decryptor for $70 million, which is a pricey ransom. According to Ars Technica, Dana Liedholm, Kaseya’s senior vice-president, said in an email that the company had obtained the key from a third party.
“We obtained the decryptor yesterday from a trusted third party and have been using it successfully on affected customers. We are providing tech support to use the decryptor. We have a team reaching out to our customers, and I don’t have more detail right now.”
Ars Technica also reports that cybersecurity firm Emsisoft is working alongside Kaseya, “… to support their customer engagement efforts. We have confirmed the key is effective at unlocking victims and will continue to provide support to Kaseya and its customers.”
While Kaseya says it obtained the key from a mysterious “third party”, plenty of folks online speculate that it may have got it from REvil and is trying to save face. It’s a possibility, but not one we can confirm or deny right now. Regardless, the tech company appears to be on the case and we can hesitantly say that this particular REvil attack saga may be reaching its end.
REvil has been making headlines for a while now, running rampant in a slew of pretty substantial online attacks. With the world being more digital than it’s ever been, cybersecurity has become a major concern for businesses, and it appears that it (unfortunately) still has a ways to go before we can stop worrying about cyber attacks.