Cybersecurity experts are bracing for a potential wave of extortion demands after a vulnerability was discovered in encrypted file-sharing software, a flaw that hackers have already used to target a string of high-profile victims, including British Airways and the BBC.
Clop is the name of a ransomware variant that has been deployed against companies and organisations around the world, and it also sometimes refers to the hacking gang that uses it. The criminal hackers are expected to begin contacting companies and demanding payment in cryptocurrency in exchange for not uploading the company’s stolen data online, he said.
Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant, said the earliest observed exploitation of MOVEit occurred on May 27. British Airways said in a statement that the incident occurred “because of a new and previously unknown vulnerability in a widely used MOVEit file transfer tool.”