08/06 update added below. This post was originally published on August, 5th, 2020.
Canon has suffered a ransomware attack that impacts numerous services, including Canon's email, Microsoft Teams, USA website, and other internal applications. In an internal alert sent to employees, Canon has disclosed the ransomware attack and working to address the issue.
BleepingComputer has been tracking a suspicious outage on Canon's image.canon cloud photo and video storage service resulting in the loss of data for users of their free 10GB storage feature.
The image.canon site suffered an outage on July 30th, 2020, and over six days, the site would show status updates until it went back in service yesterday, August 4th.
However, the final status update was strange as it mentions that while data was lost, "there was no leak of image data." This led BleepingComputer to believe there was more to the story and that they suffered a cyberattack.
Source: BleepingComputer
When we contacted Canon about this outage, they referred us to the notice on the image.canon site.
If you work at Canon or know someone working there with first-hand information on this incident, you can confidentially contact us on Signal at +16469613731.
Canon suffers ransomware attack
Today, a source contacted BleepingComputer and shared an image of a company-wide notification titled "Message from IT Service Center" that was sent at approximately 6 AM this morning from Canon's IT department.
This notification states that Canon is experiencing "wide spread system issues affecting multiple applications, Teams, Email, and other systems may not be available at this time."
Source: BleepingComputer
As part of this outage, Canon USA's website is now displaying errors or page not found errors when visited.
Source: BleepingComputer
The list of Canon domains that appear to be affected by this outage, include:
www.canonusa.com
www.canonbroadcast.com
b2cweb.usa.canon.com
canondv.com
canobeam.com
canoneos.com
bjc8200.com
canonhdec.com
bjc8500.com
usa.canon.com
imagerunner.com
multispot.com
canoncamerashop.com
canoncctv.com
canonhelp.com
bjc-8500.com
canonbroadcast.com
imageland.net
consumer.usa.canon.com
bjc-8200.com
bjc3000.com
downloadlibrary.usa.canon.com
www.cusa.canon.com
www.canondv.com
Since then, BleepingComputer has obtained a partial screenshot of the alleged Canon ransom note, which we have been able to identify as from the Maze ransomware.
Source: BleepingComputer
Maze claims to have stolen 10TB of data from Canon
After contacting the ransomware operators, BleepingComputer was told by Maze that their attack was conducted this morning when they stole "10 terabytes of data, private databases etc" as part of the attack on Canon.
Maze declined to share any further info about the attack including the ransom amount, proof of stolen data, and the amount of devices encrypted.
While we first thought that the image.canon outage was related to the ransomware attack, Maze has told us that it was not caused by them.
Maze is an enterprise-targeting human-operated ransomware that compromises and stealthily spreads laterally through a network until it gains access to an administrator account and the system's Windows domain controller.
During this process, Maze will steal unencrypted files from servers and backups and upload them to the threat actor's servers.
Once they have harvested the network of anything of value and gain access to a Windows domain controller, Maze will deploy the ransomware throughout the network to encrypt all of the devices.
If a victim does not pay the ransom, Maze will publicly distribute the victim's stolen files on a data leak site that they have created.
Maze has claimed responsibility for other high-profile victims in the past, including LG, Xerox, Conduent, MaxLinear, Cognizant, Chubb, VT San Antonio Aerospace, the City of Pensacola, Florida, and more.
In a statement to BleepingComputer, Canon says they are "currently investigating the situation."
Canon discloses ransomware attack to employees
Update 08/06/20: BleepingComputer has obtained a screenshot of an internal message sent by Canon to employees that discloses the ransomware attack.
This message further states that they have hired an outside cybersecurity company to aid in their recovery.
"Canon U.S.A, Inc. and its subsidiaries understand the importance of maintaining the operational integrity and security of our systems. Access to some Canon systems is currently unavailable as a result of a ransomware incident we recently discovered. This is unrelated to the recent issue which affected image.canon."
In response to our query, Canon continues to state "We are currently investigating the situation. Thank you."
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.
Update 8/5/20: Article updated to reflect that the image.canon outage was not related to the Maze ransomware attack.
Update 8/6/20: Canon has internally notified their employees of the ransomware attack.
Comments
longdog10 - 3 years ago
We called Canon trying to get support for one of our devices this morning, and the reason their customer service rep gave us as to why they could not put in a service ticket for dispatch was "a tornado ripped through a Canon datacenter causing a power outage". Maybe they named the ransomware event "Tornado"...