The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s (ICBC) US arm was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted trades in the US Treasury on Thursday, the latest in a string of victims ransom-demanding hackers have claimed this year, reports Reuters. ICBC Financial Services, the US unit of China’s largest commercial lender by assets, said it was investigating the attack that disrupted some of its systems, and making progress toward recovering from it.
Hackers lock up a victim organisation’s systems in such attacks and demand ransom for unlocking it, often also stealing sensitive data for extortion.
Several ransomware experts and analysts said an aggressive cybercrime gang named Lockbit was believed to be behind the hack, although the gang’s dark web site where it typically posts names of its victims did not mention ICBC as a victim as of Thursday evening. Lockbit did not respond to a request for comment sent via a contact address posted on its site.
