GSS, also one of the largest customer care and call center providers and Covisian’s Latin American and Spanish division, came across a devitalizing ransomware attack, leaving a massive part of its IT systems frozen and call centers debilitated across its Spanish customer base.
As a result, automated customer support phone services and call centers for government ministries, organizations, and companies across Latin America and Spain have been unreachable the entire week.
MasMovil ISP, Madrid’s water supply company, Vodafone Spain, TV stations, and multiple other private companies were affected by the attack, informed a source to The Record.
GSS officials sent letters to all the affected users and explained that they have currently shifted to Google-based systems and had earlier turned down all the systems that became a part of the attack.
Image Credits: The Record (Supplied by the Source)
The company did not share any timespan of the recovery and said:
“None of the applications will be working until the incident is resolved,”
However, GSS did leave some people curious after mentioning that the ransomware attack was “inevitable/unavoidable” in the letter’s first line, which the source couldn’t explain.
Inevitable is correct….Major European call center provider goes down in ransomware attack…
— DEEPAK KUMAR (D3) (@D3pak) September 24, 2021
However, a Covisian spokesperson declared that the attack was carried out on 18th September 2021 by the Conti gang. While the gang is popularly known for stealing data after attacks, Covisian confirmed that they did not find “evidence of leakage of any personal data” and that the ransomware attack did not affect any customer.
Covisian offers customer services in various other countries in Europe as well. However, the attack was limited to the GSS network only.
Spain’s National Institute of Cyber-Security, INCIBE, did not comment on the GSS ransomware incident at all.
The GSS incident occurred right after a ransomware attack that hit another call center and customer support services company, TTEC, early this month.
That’s not all. A ransomware attack with a demanded ransom of $5.9 million also hit an Iowa-based grain company. With the increasing cyberattacks each day, CISA and FBI previously also warned about possible attacks on Labor Day.
