Law Firm Sues MSP Over Black Basta Ransomware Attack
A managed service provider (MSP) has been slapped with a lawsuit by a prominent Sacramento, California law firm alleging that it failed to protect it from a ransomware attack that took down its systems.
The lawsuit, which has generated a significant amount of chatter in the channel community, filed by the law firm Mastagni Holstedt in Sacramento Superior Court, claims that LanTech LLC, a privately-owned Sacramento company, failed to adequately protect it from the attackers.
MSSP Alert has reviewed the complaint in which Mastagni is seeking more than $1 million in damages. The firm employs 42 lawyers.
LanTech owner Terry Berg and backup provider Acronis, a Delaware-based provider, doing business in California, are also named as defendants in the filing. Berg has owned LanTech since its inception in 1994.
The plaintiff alleges that they were forced to pay the attackers, said in the complaint to be Black Basta, an undisclosed sum to regain access to its network. The incident occurred in February, 2023 and the lawsuit was filed last month.
Reached by telephone, a LanTech employee declined to comment and said he knew nothing about the suit. Acronis denied any responsibility for the ransomware attack.
“Our investigation revealed that access credentials may have been compromised outside of our systems and used to delete the firm’s backups and execute a ransomware attack,” the company said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee. “Acronis has not been served with the lawsuit and will not be commenting further on this litigation.”
Black Basta, a Russian-speaking group ransomware-as-a-service crew first detected in 2022, is said to have orchestrated some 300 ransomware attacks that have landed it more than $100 million in bitcoin ransom payments.
LanTech describes itself as a “team of IT engineers with a passion for delivering exceptional service to businesses in the Sacramento region. We specialize in network management and have extensive experience in analyzing, integrating, and maintaining crucial IT systems for our clients.” The MSP lists Microsoft, Dell and HP Enterprise as “partners.”
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