Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica was confronted with 85 percent of their systems shut down after ransomware criminals infiltrated its systems demanding $550,000 in Bitcoin. Telefonica is a multinational corporation, subsidiaries of which include major European mobile operator O2, Movistar and Vivo.
As local news resource El Mundo and others report, the attack, which occurred earlier Friday, has resulted in most staff abandoning their positions and nine out of 10 company machines infected. Hackers are demanding a payment of $300 per machine, roughly equal to 300 Bitcoins currently worth around 510,000 euros.
“The origin of the infection is not confirmed at the moment, but sources close to the company point out that it is being treated as an attack originating in China,” El Mundo writes.
Telefonica’s chief data officer Chema Alonso meanwhile took to Twitter to state that the attack had been “overblown” by the media.“Our colleagues are working on it right now,” he said, adding that the problem had “unfortunately affected other organizations” and that the company was working with the victims.
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