Atos confirms third-party breach but rejects direct Space Bears compromise

Major French multinational IT firm Atos has disclosed having some files bearing its name being untowardly accessed in a Space Bears ransomware attack against a third party but refuted assertions that its systems had been breached after the firm was threatened by the ransomware gang to have its data leaked by Tuesday, reports The Register.

"Atos understands that external third-party infrastructure, unconnected to Atos, has been compromised by the group Space Bears. This infrastructure contained data mentioning the Atos company name, but is not managed nor secured by Atos," said the firm in a statement, which did not specify the owner of the external infrastructure and the extent of the exposed data. Such a development comes nearly two years after Atos denied having its data stolen in a Cl0p ransomware attack, which it had attributed to its subsidiary Nimbix and the GoAnywhere managed file transfer app. "Our cybersecurity team has identified a backup folder from 2016 that was presumably exposed, due to a zero-day vulnerability known to be exploited by Cl0p," noted Atos.