Agencies issue guidance to help prevent, recover from ransomware threat 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI yesterday released guidance to help organizations prevent and recover from a global ransomware campaign that has compromised over 3,800 VMware ESXi servers. The campaign exploits known vulnerabilities in the servers to deploy ransomware that encrypts the configuration files and may render virtual machines unusable. Among other actions, the agencies encourage organizations managing VMware ESXi servers to update to the latest software and ransomware victims to run a CISA script that may help them recover their files.

John Riggi, AHA’s national advisor for cybersecurity and risk, said, “As we continue to leverage network- and internet-connected technologies, such as virtual machines that take the place of traditional desktops, we also expand our digital attack surface. In this instance, significant vulnerabilities in the VMware ESXi software were quickly identified and leveraged by our cyber adversaries to conduct disruptive ransomware attacks, known as the ESXiArgs ransomware campaign. Once again, it’s a race to patch before our adversaries exploit the identified vulnerabilities. It is encouraging to see that CISA, working with the cybersecurity community, has developed a potential solution (https://github.com/cisagov/ESXiArgs-Recover) to recover virtual machines struck by this ransomware – which will hopefully prevent payment of ransoms. If your organization becomes victim of any cyber or ransomware attack, we strongly encourage immediate notification to the FBI and CISA. I am also available to assist your organization and provide direct access to trusted contacts at FBI, CISA and other government agencies.”

For more information on this or other cyber and risk issues, contact Riggi at jriggi@aha.org. For the latest cyber and risk resources and threat intelligence, visit aha.org/cybersecurity.