A known ransomware group on Monday started publishing data allegedly stolen from the systems of Japanese watchmaking giant Seiko.
Seiko revealed on August 10 that it had identified a possible data breach on July 28, with someone gaining access to at least one server. An investigation showed that some information may have been compromised.
“The Company and all our Group companies kindly ask our customers and business partners to contact us immediately if you receive any suspicious or unusual emails or notifications from us,” Seiko said.
The ransomware group known as BlackCat and ALPHV has now taken credit for the attack and has started leaking files apparently taken from Seiko systems after the victim refused to respond to its extortion attempts.
The cybercriminals claim to have stolen 2 Tb worth of files, including employee information, production technology details, video and audio recordings of management meetings, emails, and copies of passports belonging to employees and foreign visitors.
The ransomware group has published screenshots to demonstrate that they have obtained contracts and other corporate documents, confidential technical documents, passport copies, and emails. One screenshot seems to show that they still had access to Seiko email systems on August 14.
The hackers are threatening to either sell or leak the information stolen from Seiko if the company refuses to meet their demands.
The BlackCat group has targeted several major companies in the past year, including Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth, Reddit, Canadian software company Constellation Software, and US payments giant NCR.
Related: Veritas Vulnerabilities Exploited in Ransomware Attacks Added to CISA ‘Must Patch’ List
Related: FBI Shares Information on BlackCat Ransomware Attacks
Related: BlackCat Ransomware Targets Industrial Companies
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- CISA Warns of Old JBoss RichFaces Vulnerability Being Exploited in Attacks
- NIST Publishes Final Version of 800-82r3 OT Security Guide
- Johnson Controls Hit by Ransomware
- Verisoul Raises $3.25 Million in Seed Funding to Detect Fake Users
- Government Shutdown Could Bench 80% of CISA Staff
- Google Rushes to Patch New Zero-Day Exploited by Spyware Vendor
- macOS 14 Sonoma Patches 60 Vulnerabilities
- New GPU Side-Channel Attack Allows Malicious Websites to Steal Data
Latest News
- Bankrupt IronNet Shuts Down Operations
- AWS Using MadPot Decoy System to Disrupt APTs, Botnets
- Generative AI Startup Nexusflow Raises $10.6 Million
- In Other News: RSA Encryption Attack, Meta AI Privacy, ShinyHunters Hacker Guilty Plea
- Researchers Extract Sounds From Still Images on Smartphone Cameras
- National Security Agency is Starting an Artificial Intelligence Security Center
- CISA Warns of Old JBoss RichFaces Vulnerability Being Exploited in Attacks
- Hackers Set Sights on Apache NiFi Flaw That Exposes Many Organizations to Attacks
