WASHINGTON: Kaseya, a Florida IT firm, claimed on Tuesday that the ransomware assaults on hundreds of organizations were never a danger to key infrastructure in the United States. Kaseya’s technology is often used to help manage small enterprises such as dentists’ offices, small accounting offices, and local restaurants, according to a statement given to media by the US National Security Council.
“This incident was never a threat to critical infrastructure,” according to the statement.
Although the breach that hit Kaseya’s clients did not affect essential infrastructure in the United States, the ramifications elsewhere have been severe.
Many of the 800 grocery stores owned by the Coop group in Sweden are still recovering from the attack. Coop’s payment provider will physically visit each store and manually restore payment machines from backups. Eleven schools and many kindergartens in New Zealand were affected.
In private contacts with a cybersecurity expert and Reuters, the hackers who claimed responsibility for the attack sought US$70 million to recover all of the impacted organizations’ data, though they indicated a readiness to lower their demands.
The White House stated on Sunday that it was investigating if the weekend ransomware outbreak presented a “national risk.”
(Raphael Satter contributed reporting; Kirsten Donovan and Alistair Bell edited the piece.)/n
