Gang says ICBC paid ransom over hack that disrupted US Treasury market
By James Pearson
LONDON (Reuters) -China's biggest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, paid a ransom after it was hacked last week, a Lockbit ransomware gang representative said on Monday in a statement which Reuters was unable to independently verify.
ICBC, whose U.S. arm was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted trades in the U.S. Treasury market on Nov. 9, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
«They paid a ransom, deal closed,» the Lockbit representative told Reuters via Tox, an online messaging app.
The blackout at ICBC's U.S. broker-dealer left it temporarily owing BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK) $9 billion, an amount many times larger than its net capital.
The hack was so extensive that even corporate email at the firm ceased to function, forcing employees to switch to Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) mail, Reuters reported.
«The market is mostly back to normal now,» said Zhiwei Ren, a portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management.
The ransomware attack came at a time of heightened worries about the resiliency of the $26 trillion Treasury market, essential to the plumbing of global finance, and is likely to draw scrutiny from regulators.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department did not immediately provide comment on Monday.
The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a financial industry cybersecurity group, said financial firms have well-established protocols for sharing information on such incidents.
«We are reminding members to stay current on all protective measures and patch critical vulnerabilities immediately,» a spokesperson said in a statement, adding: «Ransomware remains one of the top threat vectors facing the financial sector.»
WHY PAY?
Lockbit has hacked
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