Kaseya IT hires FireEye to crack down on ransomware

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Successful ransomware company Kaseya IT said on Sunday it had hired a cybersecurity company called FireEye (NASDAQ 🙂 Inc. to help deal with a major breach that has affected hundreds of companies around the world.

In a message posted by Kaseya in Miami on its website https://www.kaseya.com/potential-attack-on-kaseya-vsa, its employees have been “actively involved” with FireEye and other security assessment companies. investigating the attack, which took place on Friday and quickly spread around the world.

FireEye confirmed to Reuters that it was working with Kaseya.

It is focusing on the full impact of joining Kaseya, in part because it uses so-called affected service providers managed by the affected Kaseya software tool to outsource stores that other businesses use to manage IT work in foreign offices, such as installing updates. .

Swedish food store Coop had to close hundreds of stores in the chain on Saturday because its cash register is run by Visma Esscom, which manages servers in some Swedish businesses and uses Kaseya.

A cybersecurity executive said his company alone attacked 350 customers.

“The two largest regions we’ve seen are the US and Germany,” said Ross McKerchar, head of information security at Sophos Group Plc

He said the targets were schools, small public sector organizations, travel and leisure organizations, credit unions and accountants.

McKerchar said it is difficult to delay the wave of intrusions by low-sized businesses with increasingly well-funded cybercrime gangs.

“They deal with small businesses in terms of cybersecurity,” he said.