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The British telecommunications company Colt Technology Services has been struggling with the consequences of a ransomware attack since this week. The cyber criminals from the WarLock group claim to have stolen over one million internal documents.
The problems, which were initially communicated as a technical fault, began on Tuesday, August 12, at around 11 a.m. local time. Two days later, Colt officially confirmed the security incident. In addition to Colt Technology Services, the hosting and porting services, Colt Online and Voice API platforms are also affected.
The affected internal system is separate from the customer infrastructure, the company emphasizes. Nevertheless, various systems had to be taken offline as a protective measure, which led to outages for several services.
Thank you for your patience as some of our support systems remain unavailable. We understand that this is frustrating but would like to assure you that this is being done deliberately for security reasons. We are working hard to restore the systems. If you would like to contact us, you can reach us by email or phone.
Data offered for sale
A member of the WarLock ransomware group is offering the stolen data for sale for 200,000 US dollars under the pseudonym “cnkjasdfgd”, as BleepingComputer reports. The data package is said to contain over one million documents – including financial documents, employee and customer data and internal emails.
According to Colt, it is working with external cyber security experts to restore the systems. Network monitoring for customers is still working, but more manual work is currently required.
It is not yet known exactly how the cyber criminals infiltrated the systems.
