Hardware Giant MSI Hacked – Ransomware Group Issues Demand

A cyberattack was recently launched on some of the information systems of the multinational Taiwanese technology company Micro-Star International (MSI) Co., Ltd.

According to MSI’s statement, the incident was swiftly reported to law enforcement authorities, and recovery efforts have begun.

“Upon detecting network anomalies, the information department promptly activated relevant defense mechanisms and carried out recovery measures, and reported the incident to government law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity units,” MSI explains.

With annual sales of $6.5 billion, MSI is a major manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, desktops, laptops, servers, industrial systems, PC peripherals, and infotainment products.

Money Message Ransomware Gang Claims MSI Breach and Demands $4 Million Ransom

The company was added to the list of victims of the “Money Message ransomware” group this week. The group claims to have stolen the company’s CTMS and ERP databases and files holding source code, BIOS firmware, and private keys.

According to cybersecurity experts, the group only started operating this week. If MSI doesn’t comply with its demands for a ransom payment, Money Message now threatens to expose all of these supposedly stolen documents in around five days.

Notably, the threat actors allegedly demanded a $4,000,000 ransom in discussions viewed by BleepingComputer at the time, claiming to have stolen 1.5TB of data from MSI’s systems, including source code and databases.

In a communication with an MSI agent, a Money Message operator claimed, “Say your manager, that we have MSI source code, including framework to develop bios; also we have private keys able to sign in any custom module of those BIOS and install it on PC with this bios.

According to the company, there hasn’t been a significant impact on financial business as the damaged systems have progressively resumed normal operations.

“MSI urges users to obtain firmware/BIOS updates only from its official website, and not to use files from sources other than the official website”, the company said.

Struggling to Apply The Security Patch in Your System? – Try All-in-One Patch Manager Plus

Guru baran

Gurubaran is a co-founder of Cyber Security News and GBHackers On Security. He has 10+ years of experience as a Security Consultant, Editor, and Analyst in cybersecurity, technology, and communications.

Recent Posts

Norway Recommends Replacing SSLVPN/WebVPN to Stop Cyber Attacks

A very important message from the Norwegian National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says that Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS)…

1 day ago

New Linux Backdoor Attacking Linux Users Via Installation Packages

Linux is widely used in numerous servers, cloud infrastructure, and Internet of Things devices, which makes it an attractive target…

1 day ago

ViperSoftX Malware Uses Deep Learning Model To Execute Commands

ViperSoftX malware, known for stealing cryptocurrency information, now leverages Tesseract, an open-source OCR engine, to target infected systems, which extracts…

1 day ago

Santander Data Breach: Hackers Accessed Company Database

Santander has confirmed that there was a major data breach that affected its workers and customers in Spain, Uruguay, and…

2 days ago

U.S. Govt Announces Rewards up to $5 Million for North Korean IT Workers

The U.S. government has offered a prize of up to $5 million for information that leads to the arrest and…

2 days ago

Russian APT Hackers Attacking Critical Infrastructure

Russia leverages a mix of state-backed Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups and financially motivated cybercriminals to achieve its strategic goals,…

2 days ago