BTC Ransom Hackers Hit Accenture, Consulting Firm “Contained It”

BTC ransom hackers hit Accenture, the popular IT Consulting company but the company says it has contained the matter. In our latest bitcoin scam news, we are reading more about it.

Lockbit already started publishing stolen files after Accenture promised to have contained the matter. Hackers usually demanded payments in BTC to return the control of a computer or the network to the owner. Accenture is a Fortune 500 IT consulting company with half a million employees scattered in the world. It is just a type of company that could lose not billions in revenue but also the credibility of other companies which rely on its cybersecurity expertise.

The company is reporting that it repelled such an attack from hacker group Lockbit on Tuesday evening but not before the hackers got access to some files belonging to the company. The cybercriminal outfit leaked an extortion message saying it will be publishing the data stolen from the company in a few hours unless Accenture wanted to buy the databases themselves. The message suggested that the company insider was responsible for the attack.

Accenture was not interested and as per a company statement:

 “Through our security controls and protocols, we identified irregular activity in one of our environments. We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers.”

The affected servers are no longer affected according to Accenture:

 “We fully restored our affected systems from back up [sic]. There was no impact on Accenture’s operations, or on our clients’ systems.”

Lockbit went ahead and started publishing 2384 files indicating that Accenture made no attempts to purchase the stolen data but it is still not clear how sensitive the data is. Ransomware is software designed to lock users out of the computers or networks until they hand over money usually BTC or another crypto. LockBit was around since 2019 and it is known for using targeted attacks that can spread across networks without manual intervention as per cybersecurity company Kaspersky. Hackers could try to gain access via brute force and crack weak passwords with the malware then still being able to steal data.

Major IT supplier Accenture have been hit by Lockbit ransomware https://t.co/cPAhKR7Yx7

— Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog) August 11, 2021

According to the statistics from European ransomware support company Beforecrypt, the Lockbit ransom is about $33,000 on BTC average but this number can be much higher for companies that make more money. Assuming no sensitive info was linked, the IT cybersecurity company could have just dodged a bullet after the BTC ransom hackers hit Accenture. Ransomware payments in the first five months of the year cost the companies $81 million according to Chainalysis.