Pitney Bowes Says Disruptions Caused by Ryuk Ransomware

Global shipping and ecommerce giant Pitney Bowes revealed on Thursday that the recent service disruptions were caused by a piece of ransomware known as Ryuk.

The company informed customers on Monday that some services had been unavailable due to a piece of ransomware that encrypted files on some systems. I an update shared on Thursday, the company described the security incident as “the Ryuk virus malware attack.”

The incident impacted the company’s mailing services, customer account access, the supplies web store, Software and Data Marketplace downloads, and some commerce services.

Pitney Bowes says it has made significant progress in restoring affected systems, and many services are now fully functional.

The Ryuk ransomware emerged in the summer of 2018 and researchers initially found some evidence suggesting that the malware may have been developed by North Korean hackers. However, further research showed that the initial attribution to North Korea was likely incorrect.

Ryuk has hit a wide range of organizations. It’s said to have been used in the attack on Chicago-based Tribune Publishing, an incident that resulted in the LA Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal newspapers being delivered late.

The ransomware also hit a cloud hosting provider and some U.S. cities, some of which have agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover their files.

Related: ‘Coordinated’ Ransomware Attack Hits 23 Towns in Texas

Related: Network Shares Are a Primary Target for Ransomware

Related: The Growing Threat of Targeted Ransomware