In early July, a group of hackers known as REvil targeted Kaseya in a large-scale ransomware attack.
Many companies use VSA software to manage and track Cassia computers, making the company an easy gateway to more potential victims.
The Revell Group claims to have infected a total of one million computers, but many cybersecurity experts believe this is an exaggerated number, and they expect the number to be closer to 40,000 computers worldwide.
These computers are connected to organizations including a large educational services company in New Jersey, an outpatient surgical center in North Carolina, and one of Sweden's largest grocery chains, Coop.
This supply chain attack on Cassia is the largest and most significant in history, and hackers are demanding $70 million in bitcoins to be paid as ransom.
Although the ransom was not paid, Cassia's victims are on track to recover from the attack, thanks in part to quick responses from the FBI, US President Joe Biden, and the CIA.
It is clear, then, that when an attack or hack occurs, large corporations and utilities get a lot of support but individuals have to fight their personal wars against hackers and other forms of corruption often on their own, not giving them the same resources as corporations and utilities.
This is the story of one of these victims, reported by writer Marcia Wenderff in her article on the “interestingengineering” website.
During the same weekend that Cassia was hacked, George - a fictitious name to preserve the privacy of the author of the story - was facing a cyber attack of his own, and found it almost impossible to get help, according to the writer.
First attack
On April 25, 2021, George checked his bank balance and noticed a suspended withdrawal of $700 payable in cryptocurrency and cash exchange site Uphold.
George logged into his own account and found that someone had bought Dogecoin and Ethereum with his money.
George called his bank and asked them to submit an order to cancel the $700 transaction, then sent a message to App Hold customer support, telling them to stop the transaction and letting them know that his account on their site, and possibly the accounts of others, had been hacked.
In addition, George filed a complaint with the FBI's Cyber Security Reporting website and then did not consider doing anything else.
second attack
On July 2, 2021, George received an email from cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex informing him that someone had recently logged into his account.
George hadn't accessed his Bittrix account for a while and when he checked in to verify, he found that someone had sold all the bitcoins he kept on the site and converted them into the cryptocurrency Ethereum. That person then converted the cryptocurrency to an address outside of Bittrix, making it unavailable to recover.
third attack
The day after the Petrix theft, George logged into his Facebook account and found that a page he had created for a new business had been hacked, so he was so upset that he deleted the page.
Even more exciting is that whoever took over George's page was trying to create an ad campaign on Facebook.
Fortunately, Facebook noticed something wrong and prevented the hackers from creating the campaign.
The hacker then emailed Facebook, saying that he had provided all the necessary documents.
Then George immediately changed his Facebook password and set up two-factor authentication on the site.
You can find out if your information has been compromised by a site like Half Eye Penn Pound (Getty Images)
How did this happen?
George, like many of us, uses the same email address and password on multiple sites.
For example: george@examplecompany.com
and password: unique (George's first dog's name).
If one of these sites gets hacked, or the user is a victim of phishing, hackers all over the world have the username and password, and they can try it out for free on other sites.
So the first tip: Find out if your information has been hacked, and you can do that through a site like Have I Been Pwned.
Here are some notes and information that may have made George suspect the existence of suspicious acts on his accounts:
While the amount stolen from his Beatrix account was not significant, George stated that he felt as if someone had come to his house and stole from it.
So he immediately started checking logins on all his accounts, especially those that include documents or money.
It was then found that his OneDrive cloud storage account had been accessed from the same IP address that his Bittrex account had been hacked.
OneDrive is a file synchronization and hosting service that is operated by Microsoft as part of its web version of Office and is present on Windows devices.
George's OneDrive account contained files that included many of his passwords, banking information and tax returns.
George was able to see the Internet Protocol (IP) address the hacker was running from, and traced it to ISP (Midcontinent Communications), based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Of course, tracing the address does not mean that the hacker is physically located somewhere near Topeka, the Kansas capital where George resides, he may use a VPN and be located anywhere in the world, and they can also take over someone else's computer, making them " a ghost" on the network, and uses it to launch its attacks.
The writer says that on July 5, 2021, on behalf of George, she contacted MedContent Communications, where she was able to interact with an automated representative of the company but was unable to access the information.
So I called the Sioux City Police Department, and they said they don't deal with cybercrime and that George's only recourse is to file a report on the FBI's website (ic3.gov).
This raised an obvious question for the author: If the Sioux City Police Department doesn't deal with cybercrime, how exactly is the police report filed so MedContent Communications can begin examining the alleged hacker's behavior?
The other question is: How many other accounts have been hacked?
Hackers are targeting cryptocurrencies to fund their attacks (Getty Images)
who is in Charge?
Wunderf tried to reach MedContent Communications for comment, but it was not able to reach anyone by phone, and no one responded to its questions, which confirms that some companies that provide these services make talking to one of their representatives difficult, and this leaves all those who are hacked through The services of these companies are at risk.
If local police departments fail to get a police report, or even a media report, they will not be able to follow up on identity theft cases, and more people will lose more money.
what you can do
And while George has reached out to Wunderf to explain his story to Entrusting Engineering, he's certainly not the only one to suffer from personal hacks and cyber attacks.
More than 11 billion accounts have been hacked, according to a study from the University of Maryland, which happens every 39 seconds on average, affecting one in three Americans annually.
So if you think that one of your accounts has been hacked, it is best to change your passwords, alert your banks, make sure that you have set up two factor authentication from the start and you should know more about how to spot a phishing attack, and get a password manager service, Scan your devices for viruses.
We are all vulnerable to cyber-attacks just like George, and his story is unfortunately not unique as we need more than ever to seek protection ourselves to avoid a similar fate, especially if we cannot get the help we need.