Mizuno hit by ransomware attack, delaying customer orders

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Japanese sports gear manufacturer Mizuno has suffered a ransomware attack which crippled its internal systems, pulled phone services offline, and delayed product shipments.

Citing people familiar with the matter who wanted to remain anonymous, BleepingComputer says the attack happened on February 4. Soon after the company pushed a notification to its US website, saying: “MIZUNO IS CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING SYSTEM OUTAGES. ORDER DELAYS MAY OCCUR”.

The company is being quiet on the matter, so it’s impossible to learn exactly what is going on, which ransomware operators attacked, what their demands are, and if any malware was deployed when compromising the network. If Mizuno decides not to pay the ransom, the public will probably learn a lot more, as its data will most likely leak online.

Details are scarce

What BleepingComputer managed to find out, in part from anonymous employees, and in part from customers, is that the Contact link for the website is showing an error message.

Furthermore, the internal systems are down, preventing the company from looking up existing orders, and its phone system has also been knocked offline, with Mizuno also unable to print shipping labels, meaning some orders could be delayed for as long as a month.

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It’s been a busy month for ransomware operators. Earlier this week, it was announced that NFL team the San Francisco 49ers was also targeted by a ransomware group.

The organization confirmed to the media that it had been hit by the BlackByte ransomware group, but the attack itself was fortunately somewhat limited.

In a statement confirming the incident, the 49ers said it “recently became aware of a network security incident” that disrupted its corporate IT network, but nothing more.

But there was also good news. Last week, master decryption keys for Maze, Egregor, and Sekhmet ransomware were published. Together with the decryption keys, the ransomware operators said they’ve wiped out all of the source code and would never engage in ransomware attacks again.

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Via: BleepingComputer

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.