Ransomware Actors Could Be Behind CUNA’s Recent Monday Blues

• The systems are understood to be predominantly running Microsoft software, which is frequently a target of ransomware.
• The firm does not store Social Security numbers or credit card numbers of its members.

A major lobbyist and trade association for credit unions was attacked allegedly by ransomware earlier this week; all its systems were brought offline following the incident.

What happened?

Credit Union National Association (CUNA), which is now recovering from the attack, said that the incident caused an outage impacting some IT systems.

“This is a business disruption issue,” the comment read from the association. “CUNA does not store Social Security numbers or credit card numbers of our members. Based on our investigation to date, we have no evidence to suggest that any data in our system—such as names, business addresses, and email addresses—have been accessed.”

Microsoft systems under the question

A spokesperson for CUNA did not confirm a ransomware attack as a cause for the outage but described it as a "business disruption issue" due to the cyber incident.

CUNA does not store Social Security numbers or credit card numbers of its members. Based on an internal investigation, no evidence of any data leak was found in any of the systems, the spokesperson added.

CUNA is understood to be predominantly running Microsoft software, which is usually a popular target of ransomware attackers.

Final thoughts

Headquartered in Washington, DC, CUNA had hosted a simulated ransomware attack months ago, aimed at helping credit unions defend against ransomware.

Meanwhile, CUNA's official announcement declared that it successfully restored access to the website.