Attackers have successfully compromised data storage giant Western Digital, stealing about 10 terabytes of important data, including a large amount of customer information.
Image source: Western Digital Corporation
The attackers are urging Western Digital to negotiate a ransom of at least eight figures, which would result in the release of the stolen data.
Western Digital issued an announcement on April 3 that it discovered on March 26 that an unauthorized third party had accessed several of its systems, which meant the company faced a security breach.
The company said the incident could cause further disruption to its business operations and is taking steps to ensure operational security, requiring it to take systems and services such as WD My Cloud Home offline. WD is also working to restore affected infrastructure and services, and the data breach could continue to disrupt some of its business operations.
The attackers shared a Western Digital code-signing certificate with foreign technology media outlet TechCrunch, indicating that they can now digitally sign files to impersonate Western Digital.
The hackers also shared phone numbers allegedly belonging to several company executives, which TechCrunch published. Most of the phones rang but went to automated voicemail messages. Two of the phone numbers had voicemail greetings that mentioned the names of executives the hackers claimed were associated with those numbers.
