A company that had traded for more than 150 years and employed 700 people was brought down because of a weak password.
Logistics firm KNP went out of business after criminals successfully hacked into its computers by guessing an employee’s password before locking the whole company out of its systems.
The firm is one of thousands affected by cyber attacks, which have also hit high street giants including Marks and Spencer, Harrods and the Co-op.
KNP director Paul Abbott said he had yet to tell the employee whose security details were compromised that the leak had led to the company’s closure.
The Nottinghamshire-based company, which operated 500 Knights of Old lorries, was plunged into chaos after a crime gang known as Akira demanded a ransom after locking all staff out of the systems required to run the business.
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A threatening note to the firm’s bosses read: ‘If you’re reading this it means the internal infrastructure of your company is fully or partially dead…Let’s keep all the tears and resentment to ourselves and try to build a constructive dialogue.’
Unable to pay the high sum demanded by the criminals, KNP folded up.
The government’s cyber security survey found that an estimated 19,000 British companies had suffered ransom attacks in the last year, although exact figures are hard to ascertain as businesses are not required to reprot incidents or if they have paid a ransom to criminals to reclaim their data.
Earlier this year, Marks and Spencer was thrown into chaos after falling victim to cyber criminals, taking their loyalty scheme Sparks offline and halting online sales.
While KNP’s cyber attackers didn’t name a price for restoring their systems,ransoms typically start at millions of pounds.
The average demand to UK companies is estimated to be £4million and approximately a third pay up.
Richard Horne, CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre, said that businesses needed to improve their security amid what he called a ‘wave of cyber attacks’ over the last few years.
As well as cracking passwords, hackers are also using lower tech methods to gain access to systems, including blagging their way in, sometimes through IT helpdesks.
Experts also believe that the latest generation of hackers were learning their skills through gaming.
James Babbage, the Director General of Threats at the National Crime Agency (NCA) said ransomware had become a ‘national security threat in its own right’.
He told BBC Panorama that companies were further fuelling the lucrative crime by paying up ransoms.
‘Every victim needs to make their own choice, but it is the paying of ransoms which fuels this crime’, he said.
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