One Of Chile’s Biggest Banks Pwned By Ransomware

BancoEstado, one of Chile’s three biggest banks, was forced to shut down all branches on Monday following a ransomware attack that took place over the weekend:

Our branches will not be operational and will remain closed today,” the bank said in a statement published on its Twitter account on Monday. Details about the attack have not been made public, but a source close to the investigation told ZDNet that the bank’s internal network was infected with the REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware. The incident is currently being investigated as having originated from a malicious Office document received and opened by an employee. The malicious Office file is believed to have installed a backdoor on the bank’s network.

Well, this is an example of why you need to train people to avoid the sorts of behaviors that lead to something like this. Clicking on a boobytrapped Office document is something that should not happen if users are aware of the risks. Having said that, you have to wonder why whatever anti-malware application that this bank uses didn’t catch this as REvil isn’t new. Perhaps it’s a new variant? There are so many questions about this attack that I would like to see answered so that we can all learn from this and protect ourselves.

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