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Website defaced to declare hack, promising “we are able to completely destroy Foxsemicon”.
Taiwanese semiconductor equipment manufacturer Foxsemicon has fallen victim to an apparent ransomware attack, with its website defaced to deliver the ransom message.
“If you are a Foxsemicon customer, we have all your personal data,” it said. “All your personal data will be freely available on the Internet if Foxsemicon not pays [sic] money.”
“If your management does not contact us, you will lose your job, as we are able to completely destroy Foxsemicon with no possibility of recovery.”
The Taipei Times has reported that Foxsemicon made a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, saying that the company was working with cyber security experts to mitigate the attack. Foxsemicon also said that it did not expect the attack to affect operations significantly. Nor did the company make any mention of customer data being lost.
What the statement did not mention was the specific nature of the incident nor who was responsible. Despite this, the siliconANGLE website reports that the LockBit ransomware gang was responsible.
Despite this, LockBit has made no such claim on its darknet leak site, despite the ransom demand saying that the data would end up on a darknet leak site. LockBit, as a rule, posts about its exploits once the ransom demand has been made, using its leak site to add further pressure to negotiations as a literal clock counts down on the site.
Defacing a website to deliver its demand is not a tactic that LockBit has been observed using, preferring instead to leave a .txt file on the machine that has been attacked. In fact, this is pretty much standard practice among ransomware gangs.
That said, this could be a new tactic. But it could also be exactly what it looks like, a defacement hack.
The Taiwan government said in 2021 that it faced 5 million attempted hacks every day, most of which largely come from China. According to the Taipei Times, this is the first time a major Taiwanese company has been struck by such an attack.
The attack comes days after Taiwan’s presidential elections.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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