Payroll Provider Gives Extortionists a Payday
Summary: Payroll software provider Apex Human Capital Management was hit by ransomware at 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19, taking its systems offline and disrupting payroll for roughly 350 payroll service bureaus serving small and mid-sized businesses for nearly three days. Apex paid the ransom after two outside security firms and its own team concluded by Feb. 20 that payment was the fastest route back online, but the decryption key did not work as promised, breaking file directories and rendering many executables inoperable.
Why it matters: Apex's off-site disaster recovery site was infected along with its production network, so the mirror it had just built as a failover was unusable when it was needed - and the paid-for decryption key still left one older business unit, ACA OnDemand, offline.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Ransomware
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