Private firm in Bengaluru reports data loss in ransomware attack

Bengaluru: A private company in Bengaluru has allegedly been hit by a cyberattack, rendering its data inaccessible.

The ransomware attack occurred on November 21 against Enan Tech Private Limited. East Cybercrime Police registered the FIR on November 26, following a complaint by Abhishek Anigol, 29, the data protection officer of the company.

“The company is engaged inter alia in providing a technology platform to render payment solutions related to electronic payments, collections, and payouts to various business organisations in coordination with banking merchants,” Anigol was quoted as saying in the FIR.

He told the police that on November 20, the company's data was being migrated from a third-party cloud service provider, Digiko Solutions LLP, to their in-house servers.

“On November 21, at approximately 3.30 am, our in-house server located at the office premises in MG Road was unauthorisedly accessed/hacked using ransomware by unknown persons. The breach was first noticed at 6.55 am by the team of Digiko Solutions LLP, who were handling the data migration,” Anigol said.

“Upon receiving their intimation, our team immediately switched off all systems and servers to prevent further damage. Thereafter, our internal team commenced an investigation to ascertain the details of the breach. At around 2 pm, the team conclusively determined that our servers had been attacked with ransomware, and our data had been encrypted and rendered inaccessible,” he added.

The complainant said that they also found a ransom note on the server: “The files on your server have been encrypted and stolen. You must pay to decrypt the files to prevent them from being published online. Contact me by email for all necessary instructions: [e-mail].”

The company approached the police after reporting first to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). An investigation is underway.