A ransomware attack on a cloud hosting service and managed service provider Cloudstar disrupted the operations of hundreds of companies.
Cloudstar is a leading provider of managed cloud services for various industries in the US, such as real estate, title insurance, and finance.
The company said it was hit by a “highly sophisticated” ransomware attack that crippled its services. Most of Cloudstar’s infrastructure is still down three days after it was hit by the massive attack. Only its encrypted email service is still running.
Although it did not identify the gang behind the attack, it said on Sunday that it had started negotiations with the individuals responsible for this ransomware attack.
Due to the massive loss of data that occurred over the weekend at Cloudstar, many of its customers’ files had disappeared. As a result, starting Monday, many real estate brokers have been prevented from conducting transactions and closings.
Cloudstar President Christopher Cury said they don’t have a timeline for when their customers can get their files back.
Unfortunately, most of the time, an attack on a web or cloud hosting provider can take weeks to recover, especially if large amounts of data need to be restored.
Since web hosting companies usually are more willing to pay ransoms in order to get their many customers back online, they have been the target of many ransomware gangs recently.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of high-profile attacks on various companies. These incidents included: Swiss Cloud, Managed.com, Equinix, CyrusOne, Cognizant, X-Cart, A2 Hosting, and many more.
