It has been reported that Canadian Solar, the manufacturer of solar PV modules, has claimed to be hacked by a ransomware known as LockBit 3.0 ransomware. The hackers have claimed a ransom amount from the company and have given a deadline to pay the amount till 13 September 2022. For extending the leak to the next 24 hours, the company has to pay a ransom amount of $10,000. And to destroy all the hacked data, the hackers have claimed around $20,000 of ransom from the company. Also, for downloading the stolen data, the hackers demanded $20,000. However, if the company does not pay the ransom, the hackers have stated that the data will be published on the darknet.
Ransomware continues to be a universal and critical threat to organisations everywhere, no matter their size or function. Public services are particularly high value targets for criminals, as they are viewed as more likely to pay up. In this incident, there’s no indication that the attack disrupted essential functions, however, there are plenty recent examples where organisations saw their operations grind to a halt due to a ransomware attack.
Organisations seeking to improve their overall ransomware resilience should be proactively asking themselves, “where are we most vulnerable to external threats?”, “what are we protecting?” and “where are those assets housed?”. Security teams need to be actively hunting out control gaps and closing them by either tweaking existing controls, through technology acquisition, undertaking additional monitoring or by doing all three.
Reactive teams, such as Security Operations & Incident Response teams should be regularly table-topping critical scenarios so that when a real attack occurs, they are ready to respond effectively. Preparedness will enable them to focus on the details and intricacies of the intrusion and are thereby able to speed up identification, containment, and eradication of the threat from the environment. Less time and energy will be expended on having to figure out which parts of a process do and do not apply to the current situation.