Cyber Crime

Egregor ransomware attack paralyzed for 3 days payment systems at Metro Vancouver’s transportation agency TransLink

The Egregor ransomware operators hit Metro Vancouver’s transportation agency TransLink disrupting services and payment systems.

Egregor ransomware operators made the headlines again, this time they hit Metro Vancouver’s transportation agency TransLink causing the disruption of its services and payment systems.

The news was also confirmed by Global News which has obtained the ransom letter sent to TransLink after the company announced to have detected “suspicious network activity” this week that has caused several major problems across the transit system.

On December 1st, TransLink’s announced that they were having IT issues that impacted phones, online services. The payments with credit or debit cards were not possible for three days, according to the company, the transit services were unaffected by IT problems.

Upon restoring the payment systems, Metro Vancouver’s transportation agency TransLink issued a statement announcing that a ransomware attack was the root cause of IT issues.

TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond confirmed the ransomware attack in a media release late Thursday.

“We are now in a position to confirm that TransLink was the target of a ransomware attack on some of our IT infrastructure. This attack included communications to TransLink through a printed message,” said Desmond.

Global BC anchor Jordan Armstrong shared a picture of the ransom note that was repeatedly printed by TransLink printers after the attack. The image confirmed that the company was hit by the Egregor operators, a group that intensifies its operations after the Maze ransomware shutdown its activities.

Egregor is known to target printers of the compromised organizations, instituting them to print the ransom note.

The Egregor ransomware operators recently targeted several other major companies worldwide, including Barnes and NobleCencosudCrytekKmart, and Ubisoft.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Egregor ransomware)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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