The IT Nerd

KNP Logistics, one of the UK’s largest privately owned logistics groups has declared bankruptcy, blaming a June ransomware attack and potentially leaving 730 employees without jobs. According to administrators, the “major ransomware attack” impacted necessary systems, processes and financial information, and, consequently, adversely affected the financial position of the Group which left them unable to secure critical funding to recover.

• “Against a backdrop of challenging market conditions and without being able to secure urgent investment due to the attack, the business was unable to continue. We will support all affected staff through this difficult time,” said Raj Mittal, the joint administrator who is handling the insolvency process for FRP Advisory.

After KNP was added to the Akira ransomware list of victims in June, Avast publicly released a decryptor for the Akira ransomware in July. It is not known whether KLP Logistics used the decryptor or if KLP had contacted law enforcement or an external incident response company following the ransomware attack.

Stephen Gates, Principal Security SME, Horizon3.ai:

   “Ransomware attackers are now putting all organizations in the ransomware crosshairs primarily for three reasons:

1. Ransomware attackers are being emboldened to perform more attacks since they are rarely arrested and/or prosecuted for such crimes.
2. Ransomware attackers know that many organizations are highly likely to pay the ransom to keep critical systems, technologies, and networks online.
3. Too many organizations are actively paying the demands of attackers, further incentivizing new actors to use this extremely profitable attack vector at everyone else’s cost.

   “The most effective way to defeat ransomware attacks is to continuously assess your own infrastructure, find the attack paths an attacker would take, and then fix those issues and validate that your fixes defeated the discovered attack paths. Once complete, you rinse and repeat the process regularly to discover new attack paths. No other defensive or offensive method of reducing the risk of a successful ransomware attack against your organization will be as successful as the method explained here.”

If you needed one more reason to take ransomware seriously, this is it. This business was taken out by ransomware. And if you don’t have your house in order, you can be next. Consider this situation a case study in what could happen to you.

This entry was posted on September 28, 2023 at 8:43 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.