Weak Password Allowed Hackers To Sink a 158-Year-Old Company

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: One password is believed to have been all it took for a ransomware gang to destroy a 158-year-old company and put 700 people out of work. KNP -- a Northamptonshire transport company -- is just one of tens of thousands of UK businesses that have been hit by such attacks. Big names such as M&S, Co-op and Harrods have all been attacked in recent months. The chief executive of Co-op confirmed last week that all 6.5 million of its members had had their data stolen. In KNP's case, it's thought the hackers managed to gain entry to the computer system by guessing an employee's password, after which they encrypted the company's data and locked its internal systems. KNP director Paul Abbott says he hasn't told the employee that their compromised password most likely led to the destruction of the company. 'Would you want to know if it was you?' he asks. 'We need organizations to take steps to secure their systems, to secure their businesses,' says Richard Horne CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) -- where Panorama has been given exclusive access to the team battling international ransomware gangs. A gang of hackers, known as Akira, broke into the company's system and demanded a payment to restore the data. 'The hackers didn't name a price, but a specialist ransomware negotiation firm estimated the sum could be as much as 5 million pounds,' reports the BBC. 'KNP didn't have that kind of money. In the end all the data was lost, and the company went under.'

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