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Security

Acer Hit by $50 Million Ransomware Attack (bleepingcomputer.com) 39

Posted by EditorDavid from the big-bucks dept.
Computer maker Acer has been hit by a ransomware attack "where the threat actors are demanding the largest known ransom to date, $50,000,000," writes Bleeping Computer: 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...

In response to BleepingComputer's inquiries, Acer did not provide a clear answer regarding whether they suffered a REvil ransomware attack, saying instead that they "reported recent abnormal situations" to relevant law enforcement and data protection authorities... In requests for further details, Acer said "there is an ongoing investigation and for the sake of security, we are unable to comment on details."
PC Magazine reports that data from Advanced Intel's Andariel cyberintelligence platform "was able to link the possible breach to the Microsoft Exchange issue."
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Acer Hit by $50 Million Ransomware Attack More

Acer Hit by $50 Million Ransomware Attack

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  • Go Microsoft... out the door (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @05:07PM (#61180280)

    For decades at work I've seen systems brought to a halt, malware spread to PCs, systems hacked and now recently ransomware... all because of running Windows either on servers or PC

    The only thing I've seen with other OS (openvms, VM/SP, Z/VM , Z/OS, Linux, BSD) are due to either weak passwords or crappy PHP frameworks.

    When is the world going to agree that Microsoft doesn't belong in a business? Too risky...

    • Should have ended with "only thing I've seen...". Security's hard regardless of what platform one is running. Plus I've notice the bulk are mainframe which is a small part of the total computing market.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by iggymanz ( 596061 )

        Securing Windows is hardest, because everyone, even the experts, suck at it. Funny even the macs where I've worked never got owned, the windows PC and server, early and often. What a waste of time and money to have that shit around.

    • Re: Go Microsoft... out the door (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 20, 2021 @05:31PM (#61180354)
      Not this trope again. The bulk of the attacks are on Windows because that's what most of the world uses and where most of the important work is done. When asked long ago why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied "Because that's where the money is." The same applies here.

      • Re: Go Microsoft... out the door (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @05:46PM (#61180394) Journal

        Not this trope again. The bulk of the attacks are on Windows because that's what most of the world uses and where most of the important work is done.

        Not that trope again. The bulk of the servers these days are running Linux. They're not invulnerable, much as we'd like them to be. But they don't get hit anywhere near as often as Windows-based systems.

        You hear about their flaws more often, in proportion to their discovery or exploitation, than those of Windows. But that's because "man bites dog" is news and "dog bites man" is background noise: The rarer events are more newsworthy. Also because, with open development, the bug reports are far more open. And with social pressure the main driving force encouraging bug fixes, any bug that's been left to fester leads to public shaming of the maintainers, rather than PHB-to-PHB internal memos that almost never see the light of day.

      • Very true. While I've been a Mac user for over 30 years, the reason they've largely not had the malware issue is because such a small group of people used them. It wasn't worth the investment. Why spend your time creating a virus or malware that only works on a small number of users when you can do so and have a MUCH larger pool of users? Since Macs have gained in popularity over the years they have seen more interest from malware makers, though they still don't command enough of the overall users to make t

        • Very true. While I've been a Mac user for over 30 years, the reason they've largely not had the malware issue is because such a small group of people used them. It wasn't worth the investment. Why spend your time creating a virus or malware that only works on a small number of users when you can do so and have a MUCH larger pool of users? Since Macs have gained in popularity over the years they have seen more interest from malware makers, though they still don't command enough of the overall users to make them worth most investment in them.

          the problem with that line of thinking is that there are quite enough Macs out there to make a completely viable and working malware bad guy distribution system. Especially if we buy into the idea that Mac Users are clueless people with more money than brains. Especially if you know that many/most Mac Users only use the protection that comes with the Mac, not AV - which means it should be a much more tempting target.

          There are plenty of Non-Windows computers in the world that security through obscurity ha

      • Not this trope again. The bulk of the attacks are on Windows because that's what most of the world uses and where most of the important work is done. When asked long ago why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied "Because that's where the money is." The same applies here.

        Not the tired old trope that all computers are equally secure - That died with Windows1.0

      • Bullshit, Windows isn't moving the worlds money, providing the world's insurance, providing the world's DNS, moving the world's mail, serving up most web sites. The infrastructure of the internet and world is non-Windows, wintel boy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gabest ( 852807 )

      Good luck blackmailing a cheapo company that uses free software.

    • For decades at work I've seen systems brought to a halt, malware spread to PCs, systems hacked and now recently ransomware... all because of running Windows either on servers or PC

      The only thing I've seen with other OS (openvms, VM/SP, Z/VM , Z/OS, Linux, BSD) are due to either weak passwords or crappy PHP frameworks.

      When is the world going to agree that Microsoft doesn't belong in a business? Too risky...

      Empires.

      When you commit to Microsoft, you are committing to an empire that you can build. You need an army of employees to keep your Windows machines running, and the cool part is that top management buys your reasonsH^H^H^H^H^H excuses:

      "This cannot run on anything other than Microsoft!"

      "Microsoft has the largest installed User base - because it is superior!"

      "MacOS will bankrupt the company - those over priced underpowered computers cost thousands more than the slickest Windows machines!"

      "Macs are mo

      • "This cannot run on anything other than Microsoft!"
        "Microsoft has the largest installed User base - because it is superior!"
        "MacOS will bankrupt the company - those over priced underpowered computers cost thousands more than the slickest Windows machines!"
        "Macs are more vulnerable than any other computers - they don't write viruses for them because no one is using them!
        "Windows is obviously more secure at all times - All those security updates they put out just prove Windows is inherently a secure system!"
        "Don't even get me started on Linux - Obviously for neckbeard idiots living in their mom's basements!"
        So the suits buy the BS, and your empire army of support people are enjoying job security.

        Isnâ(TM)t that the truth???

        Despite Whitepaper after Whitepaper stating clearly that the more Macs you have in an Organization, the more your IT costs go down, still nobody ever gets fired for spec-ing Microsoft.

        I really wish Apple would get serious about macOS Server (and an ASi-based XServe) again. They are leaving some significant coin on the table; not to mention a possible end to the ridiculously-tired âoeMacs are Toysâ meme...

      • Now where are my mod points, and where is the "sad but true" mod?
    • You must be to young to remember the Morris worm.

      • I remember it well, the vaxcluster I was admin of didn't run BSD. That was 1988, got anything more recent to try to make us feel bad about other OS than windows, you're sucking hard so far.

        • Why so defensive? I didn't insult you, unless being young is an insult. You said you never seen anything other than crappy passwords or PHP crap. However, you may want to review issues like CVE-2021-3156 if you want something more current.

          • Not defensive, just laughing so hard at the notion any of the issues with other OS compare to the repeated massive failures of Windows on desktop and server, billions of dollars of loss.

            Then you link a *sudo* problem? One where someone has to first be logged in? That was patched already in the major distos, in a New York minute? What a joke, it is nothing in comparison.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by clovis ( 4684 )

          openssl/heartbleed

          • and what major disaster did that cause? nothing, compared to the repeated outages, lost data and downtime small, medium and huge businesses have had with Microsoft. Billions of dollars of loss, because of use of Microsoft software.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by clovis ( 4684 )

              I'm not defending Microsoft here because it is a simple fact Microsoft's record is worse.

              However, you began this with

              The only thing I've seen with other OS (openvms, VM/SP, Z/VM , Z/OS, Linux, BSD) are due to either weak passwords or crappy PHP frameworks.

              and that is an astonishingly ignorant thing to say. It is absolutely false. To claim what you just said is too stupid to even be a lie.

      • Nice memory of my first job as novice admin. We had more than 20 11/70 running 2.9 and a dozen 780 on 4.2 all with public ips. My mentors were very security paranoid, no fingerd minimal stuff enable in inetd. Only a 750 got infected and was just powered of to take back control after swapping a couple of rm03.

    • Mainframe security was a joke until recently. While most aren't exposed to the outside world some were and they leaked tons of information. Stuff like which accounts were enabled or disabled and for decades passwords were case insensitive. That said, the mainframe world is still very interesting and pretty alien when you compare it against a PC. IBM has maintained binary compatibility back to the 1960s with the S/360 machine.
       

      • The mainframe was secure, because the only access to it was via serial terminals. Five wrong guesses of a password on a terminal, and it would be completely locked until one called the mainframe provider and put a ticket in to have that terminal unlocked. With the advent of peer to peer communication like the Internet, rather than dumb terminals, that brought an attack vector that mainframes didn't really have to bother with. This doesn't say that they are insecure, because IBM has kept with the times, b

  • Our current way of work puts convenience ahead of everything else because management feel they can get away with it.

    Only destructive, disabling attacks will compel security measures. (If your picket sentry gets his head shot off the next troop will duck.)

  • Risk Plan said OK and signed off - all is well (Score:4, Informative)

    by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Saturday March 20, 2021 @08:44PM (#61180802)
    Look, 50 Million, and other installments if they were dumb enough to pay were WORTH it. A risk plan balances risk against negative outcomes, and like betting on horses, risk is factored in, so if the worst happens, you are still ahead. A simple rollback from backups - easy and cheap in the scheme of things. Loss of info on poorly secured drives - thats ok, look what we saved on the IT budget. They the Chinese may have got something - again ok, blackmail and leakages is costed in that IT risk plan. What is unacceptable is picking a monoculture platform (read all eggs in one basket) and crossing your fingers there is safety in numbers. Or pretending risks consequences 5 years ago are the same today. Or pretending that the hack was in 6 months ago, and delayed discovery 6 months later had low costs (otherwise the risk plan is a fake). As they say, do it right, or do it over.

  • The article summary has this line

    PC Magazine reports that data from Advanced Intel's Andariel cyberintelligence platform "was able to link the possible breach to the Microsoft Exchange issue."

    I do not see the quoted text in the linked article. You can't place quotes around a sentence you made up and attribute it to some other source. That is wrong.
    Either the linked article contains the exact text or it doesn't.
    However, I could be wrong and am just not seeing it, please correct me if so.
    Slashdot has done this before, it makes me sad.

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