Cloud Hosting Provider Lost all Customer Data Following Ransomware Attack

There has been a cyber attack on two cloud hosting providers, namely CloudNordic and Azero Cloud, which Certiqa Holding owns. The cyberattack has resulted in complete data loss for all their customers.

The cloud attack was reportedly on Friday, April 18, 2023, at around 4 AM when CloudNordic and Azero cloud were exposed to a ransomware attack in which the threat actors shut down all the systems, including customer systems, e-mail systems, customers’ websites, and everything they gained access to.

Both companies mentioned that they could not and didn’t want to pay the ransom demanded by the threat actors. However, the IT teams of CloudNordic and Azero Cloud are working with external experts to get complete information about the attack and possible recreation.

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Unfortunately, the companies could not recover or recreate any customer data, and they have lost every piece of data on their customers, mail servers, web servers, etc.

Current Status

CloudNordic and Azero Cloud are highly affected by this cyber attack, and they have lost largely critical customer data but have re-established communications.

This means they have now deployed blank systems, including name servers, web servers, and mail servers. However, none of them contain any previous data.

The company has sorted out a way to restore the DNS administration interface that can enable users to get email and the web working again.

Attack Explanation

As per the report submitted to Cyber Security News, both companies attempted to migrate between data centers and had some infected systems before the migration, which the company did not know. 

Nevertheless, some servers used to manage all the servers were still wired to the previous network. Threat actors gained access to the administration systems with this network misconfiguration, which paved their way toward the backup systems (both primary and secondary backup).

The attackers encrypted all the systems they had access to, including all the virtual machines. Large amounts of data were reported to have been encrypted by the ransomware, but there seems to be no evidence of data being copied.

Both companies claimed there seemed to be no evidence of a data breach and regretted the inconvenience caused to their customers.

With the rise in cyberattacks and cybercriminals, every organization must implement multiple security measures and monitor every piece of traffic to prevent these kinds of cyberattacks.

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