A Silicon Valley Venture Capital Firm Attacked by A Ransomware; Asked for Ransom

A Silicon Valley advanced technology venture capital organization was hit hard by a ransomware attack in July 2021. The firm with more than $1.8 billion possessions is going through a search operation and fixing its systems. 

According to the data, malicious actors got access into the system and stole important data including the personal information of the company’s private investors, and limited partners. 

After the findings, a letter was written to the Maine attorney general’s office, in which ATV expressed that the firm only got to know about the attack on July 09th when its servers storing financial information had been encrypted by ransomware. Along with this, on July 26th, the firm found that the data had been stolen from the servers before the files were encrypted. 

ATV mentioned that a common “double extortion” tactic was used by the group, and also, the ransomware group menaced to upload the data online if the ransom is not being paid. ATV believes that the group targets the personal data of individual investors including the names, email addresses, social security numbers, and phone numbers in the attack. 

According to a listing on the Maine attorney general’s data breach notification portal around 300 individuals were affected by the attack, including one from Maine. While ATV already informed the FBI about the attack, no further technical details have been reported. 

The venture capital organization founded in 1979, is based in Menlo Park, California with offices in Boston. The firm extensively invests in technology, software and services, communications, and healthcare technology. Venture capital is known for its secret investors. The firm does not publically disclose its investors. However, in certain circumstances, the firm discloses names of investors such as those who invest millions into a business venture. The firm always gives different reasons for this, but analysts say it is because of market competition.