Ransomware Attack on Whirlpool and the Funke Media Group of Germany

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Whirlpool Corporation has reportedly become a victim to Nefilim Ransomware, thus putting an end to the year 2020 rather unpleasantly. Highly placed sources say that the attack might have been launched in the first week of November and it came to light on the Boxing Day after Christmas 2020.

Why the Michigan based electronics giant made it public in December is yet to be known. But sources reporting from the company say that the malware has been contained and the data recovery process is already underway.

As per the Prima facie, no consumer data was compromised in the incident and there was zero operational impact on the production, distribution and sales units.

Some corporate data pertaining to the staff like background checks, medical information details of employees and benefits related data was reportedly accessed by the hackers spreading Nefilim ransomware who later posted it online after their ransom demands were put down by the IT Staff of Whirlpool Corporation.

In other news related to ransomware, the Funke Media Group, a German firm that offers multiple newspapers across the German-speaking territories is said to have become a victim of a cyber attack- apparently of ransomware genre.

On Monday this week, the firm released a press statement admitting that 6000 of its servers were potentially infected by the file encrypting malware. Andreas Tyrock, the chief editor of Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, admitted that the attack was of “Colossal” making the information on the IT systems encrypted and inaccessible.

All the digital newspaper editions have been shut down and only the emergency editions are curtailed to be till early next month.

Now to those interested, here’s a news piece about a ransomware attack on the City of Cornelia. City manager Donald Dee Anderson has confirmed that the IT systems of the city were impacted by a ransomware attack that took place after Christmas 2020. Systems related to first responders and emergency services will remain unaffected, and garbage pickup will take place as usual. However, the admin level staff will have to go to pen and paper as most of the digital systems like the city hall phones and emails are down due as the city’s admin software has been badly impacted with the malware.

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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