How a ransomware attack caused a British company to go bust

The black-and-white message flickering across computer screens sparked panic at Knights of Old, a 158-year-old British delivery company: "If you're reading this, it means the internal infrastructure of your company is fully or partially dead."

Knights' network for managing trucks was down. So was the system for booking payments.

From 3,000km away, a criminal Russia-linked hacking gang known as Akira had sabotaged the computers at Knights of Old and two related trucking companies.

To force negotiations, the crooks in June 2023 had deployed malicious software that encrypted Knights' files and then threatened to publish online its confidential internal data. Paying a ransom would get the company a decryption key that could be used to unlock the compromised computers and servers, Akira said.

In 2023, ransomware attacks rose 70 per cent from a year earlier, to 4,611, according to the Sans Institute, a cybersecurity research and training organisation.

Since March 2023, Akira alone has victimised more than 350 organisations and extorted an estimated US$42 million (S$57 million).

Akira has had some high-profile targets, such as Nissan Motor, Stanford University and Yamaha Motor.

But cyber-security researchers have found that about 80 per cent of its victims are small- and medium-sized organisations, mostly in North America and Europe.

"No business can ignore this threat, no matter how big or small," says Mr Paul Abbott, 58, Knights' co-owner.

Having experienced computer failures in the past, Mr Abbott and his colleagues had already established an alternative way of working. They could revert to writing out paper tickets and job sheets for each delivery and use their mobile phones and Gmail.

Mr Abbott had thought the company was secure.

Just a month before the intrusion, he had arranged a £1 million (S$1.7 million) cyber-attack policy through the British insurer Aviva.