Cybersecurity
Kiteworks orders six-hour shutdown after attack warning
Kiteworks told customers to take servers offline for six hours on Saturday after saying it had received intelligence from authorities that a possible attack on its systems could come this weekend.
- Kiteworks told customers worldwide to shut down their servers for six hours on Saturday after it received intelligence from authorities.
- Frank Balonis emailed customers that law enforcement had told the company an attack on Kiteworks systems might be imminent this weekend.
- Kiteworks told BleepingComputer that it knew of no compromise and described the advisory as preventative.
- Heise reported that the shutdown window covered several time zones, including Central Europe and New York.
- Kiteworks said all known vulnerabilities were fixed in version 9.5.1 and that customers should run the latest release.
Kiteworks told customers worldwide to shut down their servers for six hours on Saturday after it received intelligence it described as credible. Heise reported that the warning came from Kiteworks chief information security officer Frank Balonis in an email to customers.
The notice covered time zones from Australian Eastern Standard Time to Pacific Daylight Time. In Central Europe, the shutdown was set for 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, 26 September, while in New York it ran from 10:00 p.m. on Friday to 4:00 a.m. on Saturday.
Kiteworks said customers should shut down the systems before the window began and should do so even if the servers were not exposed to the internet. The company told BleepingComputer that it was not aware of any compromise and said the step was precautionary.
Heise reported that customer support linked the request to possible zero-day attacks, but the company did not say that it had found or seen an unknown vulnerability used against it. The article also said Kiteworks used version 9.5.1 for currently known fixes, and it noted that the U.S. Department of State offers a $10 million reward for information connecting Clop attacks to a foreign government.
Named in this story
People
- Frank Balonis
- Kiteworks CISO who emailed the warning to customers
Companies
- Kiteworks
- told customers to shut down their servers after receiving threat intelligence
Organisations
- Heise
- reported the customer notice and quoted Kiteworks support
- Clop extortion gang
- named as a likely comparison because of its history of data-theft attacks
Governments and agencies
- U.S. Department of State
- offered a $10 million reward linked to Clop-related information
How the source tells it
The piece is written in a mostly neutral news register, but the quoted warning and short shutdown window give it a cautious, urgent feel.
- urgency the repeated six-hour shutdown deadline and weekend timing
- alarm the quoted warning of an imminent attack and possible zero-day risk