‘Ransomware gang shares internal images of Western Digital employees’

A ransomware gang has shared alleged internal footage of video calls between Western Digital employees. The storage manufacturer was hit by a cyber attack in March and the images may indicate that the damage is more serious than initially thought.

The images are according to security researcher Dominic Alvieri made after it became clear at Western Digital that a cyber attack had taken place on the company, like this confirms BleepingComputer. The images were allegedly shared by another hacking gang, Alphv, also known as BlackCat, to hint that there was more unauthorized access to the company than originally thought. This could threaten further data disclosures from the company.

As far as we know, there has been no acknowledgment from Western Digital that there is a ransomware attack. However, the appearance of the internal images online seems to indicate that the malicious hackers, who are not directly affiliated with Alphv, had more access to Western Digital than originally thought. The depicted video conversations between employees are specifically about the cyber attack and therefore suggest that the hackers still had access to Western Digital systems after the initial attack.

Western Digital reported in early April that the company was the victim of a cyber attack, after which the My Cloud storage service was offline for roughly a week and a half. In mid-April it was announced that 10TB of data had been stolen from the company, after which Alphv threatened further consequences if Western Digital did not pay a ransom. The perpetrator claimed to have stolen customer data, telephone numbers and internal emails, among other things, and was also said to have gained access to internal tools, including apparently the video calling software in which screenshots of conversations could be captured.