Olympus officially admitted to hitting by a ransomware attack, BlackMatter under suspicion

Olympus, a technology giant officially announced to have been a victim of a ransomware attack with plausible leads indicating BlackMatter Ransomware Group...

13-Sep-2021

3 min read

Olympus, a leading medical technology company, has recently admitted that its EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) IT systems last week was hit by a ransomware attack and is currently undergoing investigation in order to discover the extent of the impacted area, as a result of this attack and will keep everyone updated regarding any further development.

However, the overall security of customers was not breached upon initial investigation. "The support, service and security of our customer have the highest priority and are not affected by this case," Christian Pott, company spokesperson, dealt with corporate matters of the company mentioned to BleepingComputer.

“Upon detection of suspicious activity, we immediately mobilized a specialized response team including forensics experts, and we are currently working with the highest priority to resolve this issue. As part of the investigation, we have suspended data transfers in the affected systems and have informed the relevant external partners.” according to the issued statement by the company three days before this came into the spotlight.

“We are currently working to determine the extent of the issue and will continue to provide updates as new information becomes available. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.”

"As part of the investigation, we have suspended data transfers in the affected systems and have informed the relevant external partners."

According to TechCrunch, the ransomware attack breached into Olympus's EMEA on 8th September while there is very limited information available about the ransomware attack to identify who is actually behind this viable attack however the infected system left a ransom note that pointed fingers at BlackMatter ransomware group along with a TOR site used by them to engage with their victims in the past.

As the name suggests it's a rebranded version of the previous DarkSide Ransomware Group that came into existence at the end of July 2021. Besides, BlackMatter even explicitly announced in the past that healthcare organizations, critical infrastructure, organizations in the defence industry, and non-profit companies will not be under their target.

In August, VMware ESXi virtual machine platform was supposedly the first target of BlackMatter after their resurrection.