Cyber Attack in T&T - All Massy Stores systems down

[daring dragoon]

These people don't know anything about IPS and IDS systems to detect and prevent certain attacks? They should all be doing vulnerability assessments on their network for security risks as well.

any hacker/s worth their salt can get around these...they could have infiltrated a long time now and just decided to let them know now by taking them down. Companies need to have proper plans in place not if it happens but when it happens. DR plans doesn't exist in most organizations yet they talk a lot about it at meetings.

them massy hackers jokey. them on kicks, must be them boys from the pizza lime pull that off who used to feel them is the local pirates of silicon valley. if the hackers wanted to hurt massy them would of hacked system, reduce all prices to ridiculously low and hurt the pockets of massy. most cashiers have probably 1 or 2 passes and just there for the money so they scan the goods and tell you the final price and give you change. i get a massive chicken in xtra foods for 15cents a time and cashier didnt bat an eye. a grocery last week have flour $80 but it scanning $65 and the cashier didnt care. it would make more sense for the hackers to change up all the prices instead.

[K74T]

[aaron17]

not sure if this is related...

https://guardian.co.tt/news/48m-for-spy ... 4647f571d4

[hover11]

I don't think ppl understand how serious this is, if a company like massy holdings can be hacked imagine what about ministries /state institutions which dont have the top IT personnel compared to them to help prevent such.....

[MaxPower]

them massy hackers jokey. them on kicks, must be them boys from the pizza lime pull that off who used to feel them is the local pirates of silicon valley. if the hackers wanted to hurt massy them would of hacked system, reduce all prices to ridiculously low and hurt the pockets of massy. most cashiers have probably 1 or 2 passes and just there for the money so they scan the goods and tell you the final price and give you change. i get a massive chicken in xtra foods for 15cents a time and cashier didnt bat an eye. a grocery last week have flour $80 but it scanning $65 and the cashier didnt care. it would make more sense for the hackers to change up all the prices instead.

dd,

Why would you want to hurt Massy and change up their prices?

You want the establishments to get like a fish market?

Many people pay Massy’s prices with pride and enjoy a comfortable shipping experience. We don’t need the rango tango riff raff bonga ghetto fabulous crowd coming in and harassing the customers.

It very simple my good man, if you don’t support Massy, then it’s just that…don’t. If the prices are high, the people have a choice and there are many other cheaper options out there. Sabotaging them to reduce their prices is either jealousy, hate or something else personal.

[S_2NR]

Many people pay Massy’s prices with pride and enjoy a comfortable shipping experience.

correct. tru valu is also fine.
xtra foods does give me anxiety.

[agent007]

Lol at Massy with top IT personnel. You would be surprised at the competency levels of some govt IT employees.

That said, local tech reseller companies are pushing public cloud services like Azure years now. Azure reduces the need for on-prem equipment and expertise.

Should systems go down, the fault may not necessarily be local but based on foreign server/s located in a remote DC.

We have a lot of dodo management personnel in T&T. These exec management officers, despite having their MBA’s still consider IT spending as OPEX. When we start to think of IT as CAPEX to derive competitive advantage and include it as part of our business strategy, then and only then we will get serious.

If certain companies turn to proper security appliances from Cisco, Fortinet and CheckPoint etc. we can be better equipped to protect our organizations from attack.

I saw WFH employees of many companies in T&T with their laptops USB drives open to anyone sticking nonsense in there and the program auto executes. Some of them using McAfee, Kaspersky, AVG and even Avast lol.

We need enterprise grade Veritas and Broadcom endpoint protection included in our corporate conversations. Our local IT infrastructure at the general level is seriously lacking.

I would urge influencers to get in contact with the local reps for those brands above and start those conversations from now. Those solutions architects can help design a proper system for proposal and it will be expensive but worth it.

[daring dragoon]

them massy hackers jokey. them on kicks, must be them boys from the pizza lime pull that off who used to feel them is the local pirates of silicon valley. if the hackers wanted to hurt massy them would of hacked system, reduce all prices to ridiculously low and hurt the pockets of massy. most cashiers have probably 1 or 2 passes and just there for the money so they scan the goods and tell you the final price and give you change. i get a massive chicken in xtra foods for 15cents a time and cashier didnt bat an eye. a grocery last week have flour $80 but it scanning $65 and the cashier didnt care. it would make more sense for the hackers to change up all the prices instead.

dd,

Why would you want to hurt Massy and change up their prices?

You want the establishments to get like a fish market?

Many people pay Massy’s prices with pride and enjoy a comfortable shipping experience. We don’t need the rango tango riff raff bonga ghetto fabulous crowd coming in and harassing the customers.

It very simple my good man, if you don’t support Massy, then it’s just that…don’t. If the prices are high, the people have a choice and there are many other cheaper options out there. Sabotaging them to reduce their prices is either jealousy, hate or something else personal.

just like when MT used to have the Tuesday special when the baboons from the hill used to descend on invaders bay and chaos would breakout with fights, cars being tampered with, robberies. a hacker is meant to cause chaos not for financial gain. them men jokey.

[MaxPower]

I used to be a hacker in the ICQ days.

[paid_influencer]

went Massy this morning and can report everything is fine. made my groceries, packed my reusable bags, left satisfied.

[MaxPower]

went Massy this morning and can report everything is fine. made my groceries, packed my reusable bags, left satisfied.

Thanks for the update bro.

This is fantastic news and a step forward, moving forward.

Massy’s speedy recovery would not have been possible without the loyalty and support from valuable customers as yourself.

[timothymcdavid]

Hmmm ... Right now hearing that news leaves me with mixed feelings ... I am happy that they are back to normal ... on the other hand I vex with myself for having to stand up in line for over an hour yesterday cause only 3 cashiers where operating in Trincity yesterday.

Hopefully local and regional companies would take their cybersecurity and IT more seriously but i wont hold my breathe on that been in this game long and know people and business still think it cant happen to them. Wouldnt at all surprise me if it eventually slipped out this like many of these things was an inside job of some angry employee script kiddy if that is still an in use term.

[ProtonPowder]

Nothing would change.

Companies would just tack cybersecurity on the list of duties for existing positions. Basically all local private and public places looking for one singular person to do social media management, content creation, SEO, regular IT, database management, now is just cybersecurity on top of that.

Asking your regular IT team to do cybersecurity is like asking a building maintenance man to do armed security.

[redmanjp]

for cybersecurity u need ppl with those specific certifications. a normal admin would not qualify - he may be a jack of all trades but u need someone who specializes in it.

[redmanjp]

the key to recovery here assuming this attack was ransomware is having offline backups. antivirus alone may not help.

online backups (on a server which is networked) are good only if u lose a drive and the backup is stored on another one, or if someone accidentally deletes something. but ransomware or a worm virus can spread through the network infecting all servers including the backup servers so having something like a tape backup would be the solution. and taking the tape off premises would also safeguard against other disasters like a fire.

[K74T]

[pugboy]

usually them hackers will wait a longish time to make sure backups contain the compromised code
so restoring from clean code would result in very old data and you basically starting from scratch or rebuilding data from paper records if anything, that was the case with tatil who did not pay

of course if only cashers/sales data was compromised it may not really be such a big deal in terms of operations as they could still continue business and it seems this way, except loyaltiy card data is hacked too.

the key to recovery here assuming this attack was ransomware is having offline backups. antivirus alone may not help.

online backups (on a server which is networked) are good only if u lose a drive and the backup is stored on another one, or if someone accidentally deletes something. but ransomware or a worm virus can spread through the network infecting all servers including the backup servers so having something like a tape backup would be the solution. and taking the tape off premises would also safeguard against other disasters like a fire.

[redmanjp]

the loyalty card system still down. perhaps no backups.

https://newsday.co.tt/2022/05/10/weeks-after-cyberattack-massy-cards-still-not-working/

[redmanjp]

we need to have cyber regulations- so if u have an unsecure network or dont abide by it and these things happen as a result customers can sue., and u can be fined as well. lucky in this case card data wasn't compromised but it was for aeropost.

[hover11]

we need to have cyber regulations- so if u have an unsecure network or dont abide by it and these things happen as a result customers can sue., and u can be fined as well. lucky in this case card data wasn't compromised but it was for aeropost.

We in a country where most government ministries still heavily paper based and you talking about cyber regulations probably in the next 50 years. Atm this just isn't their priority nor focus.

[paid_influencer]

massy cards don't have a limit on points (and expiration date)? I am a loyal massy customer but I never signed up for a card because, as you know, mark of the beast etc.

The last card i had was off-island (didn't require any ID) and it was something like when you reach 200 points, it did had take off $5 from your bill on the next swipe and reset to 0 points. Grocery limited their liability that way.

[bluefete]

Costa Rica declares state of emergency over ransomware attack

Kevin Collier
Wed, May 11, 2022, 5:55 PM

Costa Rica has declared a state of emergency after ransomware hackers crippled computer networks across multiple government agencies, including the Finance Ministry.

The official declaration, published on a government website Wednesday, said that the attack was “unprecedented in the country” and that it interrupted the country’s tax collection and exposed citizens’ personal information.

The hackers initially broke into the Finance Ministry on April 12, it said. They were able to spread to other agencies, including the Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications and the National Meteorological Institute.

Leon Weinstok, the director of the Costa Rica office of the law firm BLP, who specializes in cybersecurity law, said the attack had severely affected the country’s ability to function.

“The government has been really, really affected. It is impossible to quantify the losses at this time,” Weinstok said.

Ransomware hackers encrypt victims’ computer networks and demand payment that they say will unlock them, although that process doesn’t always work. Costa Rica never considered paying the ransom, as it goes against national laws to participate in such negotiations, Weinstok said.

Costa Rica’s president, Rodrigo Chaves, just took office Sunday. The emergency declaration gives him the authority to hire external cybersecurity experts without waiting for permission from the country’s legislative assembly, Weinstok said.

Conti, one of the most destructive active ransomware gangs, is responsible for the attack. Ransomware groups often try to extort victims by threatening to publish stolen data, and Conti published a large cache of documents, alleged to be from Costa Rican government sites, to its dark web site Sunday.

Conti is perhaps most infamous for hacking and severely disrupting Ireland’s national health care system last year. While membership in ransomware gangs is often fluid, the gang is largely made up of Russian and Eastern European hackers. It declared its allegiance to Russia when the country invaded Ukraine in February, said Brett Callow, a ransomware analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

On Friday, the U.S. State Department said the group was responsible for the Costa Rica hack and offered a $10 million reward for help bringing Conti hackers to justice.

[pugboy]

boy if that happen here i could hear the blame on kamala

[snatman]

Were any credit cards compromised?