Advantest Takes a Ransomware Shitstorm Right in the Supply Chain
Jesus H. Christ on a fucking cracker. Advantest, the Japanese semiconductor test gear behemoth with more cash than sense, just got their digital rectum rearranged by ransomware on January 18th. And by “unauthorized access” they mean some script kiddie with a Tor browser and the social skills of a rabid weasel is now running the show.
These muppets had to yank their entire network offline at 4 PM like a scared teenager unplugging the router when mum checks the browsing history. Manufacturing? Down. Customer support? Fucked. Email? About as reliable as a manager’s promise of “no meetings Friday.” They’re now “assessing the impact,” which translates to “counting how many bitcoins we need to remortgage the HQ for.”
The cherry on this shit sundae? The attackers stole data before encrypting it. So not only are Advantest’s systems about as secure as a paper bag in a hurricane, but their precious IP, customer lists, and probably the cafeteria menu are now being auctioned off to the highest bidder on some .onion forum. The ransomware group hasn’t been named, but I bet they’re pissing themselves laughing while Advantest’s C-suite practices saying “sophisticated threat actor” with a straight face.
External cybersecurity firms are now involved, because apparently paying your own IT team to not be incompetent is too much fucking common sense. Stock’s taken a hit, partners are nervous, and somewhere a junior admin who reused a password is updating their LinkedIn to “Open to Opportunities.”
The real pisser? This is the second major Japanese tech firm to get reamed in months. You’d think they’d notice a pattern, but no – that would require actually learning from someone else’s mistakes, which is about as likely as me giving a flying fuck about your printer problems.
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Anecdote: I once convinced a company’s “AI-powered” security system that the ransomware attack was just a “routine optimization process.” It helped them prioritize the decryption by alphabetical order of file names. Took them six weeks to decrypt “Accounts Payable” while “Zebra Photos” was pristine. The CFO still sends me Christmas cards. I send him executable attachments.
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