The US subsidiary of Canon has admitted that a ransomware attack on its infrastructure left corporate data, including employee information, exposed.
In a statement, Canon USA said that it is in contact with law enforcement agencies and is using a cyber security company to help investigate the issue.
It said there was “unauthorized activity on our network between July 20, 2020 and August 6, 2020. During that time, there was unauthorized access to files on our file servers”.
In August, the Maze ransomware group has posted on its darknet website over 2.5GB of data it claimed was from Canon USA.
Canon added that after a careful review of file service earlier this month, it determined that there were files that contained information about current and former employees from 2005 to 2020, along with their beneficiaries and dependents.
“The information in the files included the individuals' names and one or more of the following data elements: Social Security number, driver's license number or government-issued identification number, financial account number provided to Canon for direct deposit, electronic signature, and date of birth,” the company said in a statement.
It added that, as a precaution, employees will receive a complimentary membership to Experian's credit monitoring service.
Earlier this month, the gang behind the Maze ransomware said it would be shutting down its operations for good. The notorious group, first discovered in May 2019, built a solid reputation in a short space of time to encrypt all the files it can on infected systems before demanding a ransom to return the documents.
Since Maze “retiring”, other gangs, such as Egregor, have taken up the mantle to strike at other firms.
-
Microsoft and Cloudflare just took down a major phishing operationNews RaccoonO365’s phishing as a service platform has risen to prominence via Telegram
-
Enterprises are concerned about ‘critical shortages’ of staff with AI ethics and security expertiseNews Tech leaders are reporting higher demand for AI literacy and “human skills”
-
Cyber professionals are losing sleep over late night attacksNews Hackers are biding their time and launching attacks when businesses can’t respond
-
Prolific ransomware operator added to Europe’s Most Wanted list as US dangles $10 million rewardNews The US Department of Justice is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Volodymyr Viktorovych Tymoshchuk, an alleged ransomware criminal.
-
Jaguar Land Rover “did the right thing” shutting down systems to thwart cyber attackNews The attack on Jaguar Land Rover highlights the growing attractiveness of the automotive sector
-
Ransomware attack on IT supplier disrupts hundreds of Swedish municipalitiesNews The attack on IT systems supplier Miljödata has impacted public sector services across the country
-
A notorious hacker group is ramping up cloud-based ransomware attacksNews The Storm-0501 threat group is refining its tactics, according to Microsoft, shifting away from traditional endpoint-based attacks and toward cloud-based ransomware.
-
Security researchers have just identified what could be the first ‘AI-powered’ ransomware strain – and it uses OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20b modelNews Using OpenAI's gpt-oss:20b model, ‘PromptLock’ generates malicious Lua scripts via the Ollama API.
-
Data I/O shuts down systems in wake of ransomware attack
News Regulatory filings by Data I/O suggest the costs of dealing with the attack could be significant
-
Average ransom payment doubles in a single quarterNews Targeted social engineering and data exfiltration have become the biggest tactics as three major ransomware groups dominate
