Gates Corporation hit by ransomware

A century-old Colorado company has fallen victim to a ransomware attack. As a result, its sensitive HR documents were exposed to attackers.

Gates Corporation is Denver-based manufacturer of transmission belts and fluid power products. Founded in 1911, the company has over 15,000 employees.

In February, the firm was hit by ransomware attack. It assured authorities and the public that it hadn’t paid a ransom to decrypt servers and restore operational capability, and was able to restore systems on its own.

While Gates Corporation believes the hackers were only after money and not information, it started notifying the affected parties of the incident “in an abundance of caution”.

“We were able to restore and restart our production capabilities quickly and without having to pay the attackers,” the company said in a letter to the affected parties.

According to the data breach notification filed with Maine Attorney General’s Office, threat actors accessed information of over 11,000 people.

Hackers exfiltrated HR records that might have included the following information:

• Name

• Address

• Date of birth

• Social Security number

• Direct deposit information

• Driver’s licence

• Passports

The company has received no reports of data misuse at the time of writing this article.

“We take the security of your information seriously and have taken measures to reduce the likelihood of a future cyber-attack, including increasing threat detection and further restricting remote access to meet the continually evolving cyber threat,” it said.

As is common with security incidents like this, Gates Industrial Corporation is offering identity monitoring services to affected parties.