Global Optics Provider Hit with Ransomware Attack and a $10M Ransom

Global optics manufacturer Hoya had business operations at its headquarters and several business divisions impacted and is now facing a “No Negotiation / No Discount Policy” $10 million ransom decision to make.

On March 29, Hoya, which employs over 37,000 people in 160 offices and 30 countries, was the target of a ransomware attack by an affiliate of the ransomware-as-a-service group “Hunters International.”

The company minimally acknowledged the attack on their website, and later provided additional detail in a separate statement. Bleeping Computer obtained dark web proof of the ransom by Hunters International, alleging 1.7 million files being stolen, totaling 2TB of data:

Source: Bleepstatic

While the impact on ordering systems in production may be an indication that either a vulnerability exploit or a supply chain attack occurred to provide initial access, because 60% of the code used by Hunters International is identical to Hive, many believe this group to simply be a renamed version of Hive – which uses compromised credentials to gain access to VPNs and remote access solutions.

The gathering of credentials, of course, usually is sourced from phishing campaigns intent on credential harvesting to be sold on the dark web – an attack easily avoided by organizations who enroll their users in new-school security awareness training.

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