Due to the REvil ransomware attacks worldwide on Saturday, the Swedish Coop grocery store chain had to close all 800 of its stores because it could not operate its cash registers.
The shutdown of the major food retailer followed Friday’s unusually sophisticated attack on U.S. tech provider Kaseya. The ransomware gang known as REvil is suspected of hijacking Kaseya’s desktop management tool VSA and pushing a malicious update that infect tech management providers serving thousands of businesses.
Huntress Labs, one of the first to sound the alarm of the wave of infections at the providers’ clients, said that thousands of small companies might have been hit. Miami-based Kaseya said it was working with the FBI and that only about 40 of its customers were impacted directly. It did not comment on how many of those were providers that in turn spread the malicious software to others.
In a statement, the FBI said it was investigating in coordination with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “We encourage all who might be affected to employ the recommended mitigations and for users to follow Kaseya’s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately,” the agency said.
The impacted businesses had files encrypted and were left electronic messages asking for ransom payments of thousands or millions of dollars.
President Joe Biden has directed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate who was behind the attack. According to Coop, one of Sweden’s biggest grocery chains, a tool used to remotely update its checkout tills was affected by the attack, so payments could not be taken.
Kaseya technology was used by the Swedish company Visma Esscom, which manages servers and devices for a number of Swedish businesses. State railways services and a pharmacy chain also suffered disruption.
