Data center giant Equinix has revealed its systems were hit by an apparent ransomware attack.
Although it didn't identify which specific systems were affected, the company released a statement stating that it was “currently investigating a security incident we detected that involves ransomware on some of our internal systems.”
Equinix offers a range of data center and networking systems and services to customers, including a range of managed services supporting areas such as web hosting.
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"Our containment and mitigation efforts have progressed well since the detection of the incident and we have reached a milestone that we believe will prevent the release of any data associated with this incident," the company's statement said.
"Our data centers and services to customers have not been impacted by the incident and our internal systems are rapidly approaching full restoration."
We continue to investigate the incident and will update this blog as appropriate."
Equinix ransomware
"Our data centers and our service offerings, including managed services, remain fully operational, and the incident has not affected our ability to support our customers," Equinix's initial response has said.
The company added that as most of its customers operate their own equipment within Equinix data centers, this incident would have had had no impact on their operations, and that the data on their equipment at Equinix would have been protected.
"The security of the data in our systems is always a top priority and we intend to take all necessary actions, as appropriate, based on the results of our investigation," the company added, noting that it had also reported the incident to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.
Ransomware has remained a popular attack vector for criminals in recent months, offering potentially huge gains for successful assaults.
Recent research found that 65% of global organisations had reported a ransomware infection last year, with phishing-driven ransomware attacks increasing notably in 2019, thanks in part, to popular RaaS offering GrandCrab – which is estimated to have generated over $2bn in ransom payments.
Ransomware attacks have grown in frequency in recent years and have the potential to cause significant disruption, as highlighted by the recent assault on fitness giant Garmin.
The incident caused the company to suffer a worldwide service outage that spanned multiple days, preventing users from uploading exercise data to Garmin Connect and using its aviation navigation service, FlyGarmin.
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- Via The Register
