The IT infrastructure of Atol, a major manufacturer of equipment and software for trade automation, was attacked by hackers. As a result of the incident, the company’s website and IT resources were unavailable, and the internal data of its customers were posted on the Web. The company acknowledged the hack, but assured that the attackers did not receive partner information. Hackers could encrypt the company’s data and ask for a ransom from it, experts say.
The scale of the problem is assessed by Zecurion CEO Alexei Raevsky:
“In this case, the leakage of customer data will not create any particular problems, because Atol is the market leader, every second store and every second outlet is their client. You can just take a directory of stores, and, with a greater degree of probability, it will turn out to be practically a list of Atol’s customers. Of course, this story may not be very pleasant if we are talking about competition, but I do not think that competitors were behind this, they are unlikely to use this database. As for the general situation, indeed, attacks on Russian resources and infrastructure have now intensified, and both so-called hacktivists and organized structures are engaged in this in order to damage critical information infrastructure and gain access to confidential data.”
Atol’s clients include the Rigla network, Burger King and other major players. Burger King told the Kommersant newspaper that they didn’t notice any problems in transactions, because the systems that are critical for business and guests are duplicated in the company, and you can switch between providers in case of problems. Other Athol clients did not respond to a press request.
Big news about data leaks of major players appear every other day, but the problem is not systemic, says Pavel Kulakov, CEO of data center operator Oxygen:
“You can’t make a perfect cybersecurity system. But what we have seen over the past year is that companies are systematically, step by step, strengthening cybersecurity and implementing solutions such as a vulnerability scanner, control of privileged users, application protection, protection of infrastructure from DDoS attacks. We do not see that something is being hacked every day, but the fact that incidents do happen, yes, they do happen, but they are not of a systemic, comprehensive nature for everyone and always. We see that banks, retail, fintech, a huge number of companies work without interruption. Of the attacks that are currently taking place, less than 1% are effective and achieve results. About 99.5% of attacks turn out to be unproductive and ineffective, they are repelled, and at all levels. I think that there is no need to dramatize this case, to draw some kind of parallels, to consider that this is part of the system.”
According to the DDoS-Guard service, by the spring of 2023 the number of attacks on Russian business may increase by 300%, exceeding the records of 2022. Then the number of incidents was about 1.2 million. Attacks on the internal platforms of organizations will pose the greatest danger.
