Cloudstar, one of the title industry’s primary cloud providers, remains compromised after a recent ransomware attack disrupted its services.
The company also provides services to real estate, legal, insurance, financial services, petrochemical and the oil and gas industries.
The Victim of a Ransomware Attack
Here’s what happened, according to a notice on the Cloudstar website. In July, Cloudstar discovered it was the victim of a highly sophisticated ransomware attack. Due to the nature of this attack, the company’s systems are currently inaccessible and Cloudstar does not have a definitive restoration timeline.
As of this month, the company remains compromised.
“We have continued to advance our restoration efforts and we now anticipate that we will be able to recover the majority of our customer data,” the company website states. “Nevertheless, this process is very complex, and due to the extensive impact that this event had on our systems we are unable to provide a definitive ETA. We expect that this overall process will take several weeks with continued diligent effort. That said, we are continuing to work directly with individual customers to answer their questions and facilitate the return of their data when it is safe to do so.
“The singular focus of everyone at our company remains the safe and efficient restoration of our customer’s data and helping them continue their operations as best as we possibly can. We once again thank you for your patience and understanding during this incredibly challenging time.”
Ransomware criminals infiltrate networks with malware that cripples companies by scrambling all their data. Victims only get a decoder key when they pay up. The costs of such attacks add up. Some experts conservatively estimate that hackers received $412 million in ransom payments last year.
And such attacks are a growing business for hackers.
The Rise in Ransomware Attacks
According to this year’s Cyber Threat Report from SonicWall, ransomware attacks have increased rapidly, surpassing the number of attacks in 2020 and the first half of this year.
The report revealed that over 304.7 million ransomware attacks were reported globally in the first half of this year, exceeding 304.6 million attacks in 2020, which is a 151% increase.
Commenting on the rising ransomware trend in an article published by CISO MAG, Bill Conner, SonicWall’s president and CEO, said, “In the past 15 months, the world has endured an unprecedented degree of change. As the disruption of a global pandemic impacted everything from the highest levels of the federal government down to the way kindergartners learned to read, cybercriminals seized upon the changing environment to institute the new business normal they wanted.”
Considering the ongoing nature of the pandemic, and the online disruption it brings, experts predict ransomware, and other forms of cybersecurity crimes, both business and personal, are going to continue to rise.