Citycomp Ransomware Attack Nabs Financial Data From Several Large Companies

A ransomware attack on a large Germany-based IT provider, Citycomp, has put the financial data of several of the world’s biggest companies at risk, including Oracle, Airbus, Toshiba and Volkswagen.

Citycomp issued a statement saying that the company has “successfully fended off a hacker attack and does not yield to blackmail. The repercussion is the publication of the stolen customer data.” The company also says it is cooperating with the State Office for Criminal Investigation Baden-Württemberg to begin the prosecution processes against the offenders when found.

“In this case the victim, CITYCOMP, has taken necessary steps after the attack and has been transparent about reporting it. But the damage is done — the data is released, and CITYCOMP and their customers have taken a blow to their reputations,” said Dan Tuchler, CMO at SecurityFirst.

The attack is further evidence that data theft is an ongoing threat worldwide. Even so, ransomware attacks are flexible and customizable, as are other types of attacks these days, so threats differ in their implementations.

“Although in most other regions outside of Latin America the focus is instead on ransomware as an attack, and theft of data is typically associated with identity theft or credit card fraud, mayhem and good old extortion are real world threats,” said Warren Poschman, senior solutions architect with comforte AG.

Citycomp said in its statement that incident analysis by Deutor Cyber Security Solutions GmbH, G DATA Advanced Analytics GmbH and the Federal State Police Baden-Württemberg “showed that at no point any indication for a risk of further infection of customer and partner systems, but for security reasons some of the systems have nevertheless been disconnected.”