Early cybersecurity research revealed that 621 government entities, healthcare service providers and school districts, colleges as well as universities were attacked by ransomware in the US, while the latest one is a data centre provider -- CyrusOne, which has become the new victim of ransomware.

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the company is currently working with law enforcement and forensic officials to investigate the ransomware attack. CyrusOne also said that they are helping their customers restore lost data from backups.

Ransomware attack on CyrusOne

As reported this attack took place on Wednesday. After ground research, cybersecurity experts found that it was caused by a version of the REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware, which is from the same family that hit several managed service providers in June, over 20 Texas local governments and more than 400 US dentist offices in August. It should be mentioned that it was a targeted attack against CyrusOne's network but the point of entry is still unknown.

ZDNet reported that the company has not yet publicly disclosed the incident. A financial and brokerage firm, called FIA Tech alerted its customers about a data breach incident on Thursday. This company did not name the data centre provider initially, but a quick search revealed that it is CyrusOne. In a message to the customers, FIA Tech wrote that this ransomware attack was "focused on disrupting operations in an attempt to obtain a ransom from our data center provider."

Consequences of a recent ransomware attack

After the similar ransomware attack which hit at least 22 cities and local governments in Texas, a mayor of Texas municipality said that the hackers who infiltrated the computer systems have asked for $2.5 million as ransom. But after the recent attack on CyrusOne, it was revealed that the attack has not impacted all of the company's data centers and authorities do not intend to pay the ransom demand. However, as per the reports, restoring servers and customer data will be a lengthy process.

CyrusOne

CyrusOne, which is a real estate investment trust that invests in carrier-neutral data centres and provides co-location and peering services, owns 45 data centers in Europe, Asia as well as in the Americas and has more than 1,000 customers.