The Equilend Cyberattack has forced the loan lending firm to trade manually with systems going offline. Lockbit ransomware gang is said to be behind the cybersecurity incident.
EquiLend, a prominent financial firm on Wall Street known for processing trillions of dollars in securities transactions each month, has experienced a cyberattack. As a result, some of its systems are currently offline.
EquiLend, which is owned by major Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, expects that it may take several days before all services are fully restored.
EquiLend spokesperson Christopher Gohlke stated that the company identified a technical issue impacting certain parts of its systems on Monday.
EquiLend is actively working with external cybersecurity firms and advisors to investigate the Equilend outage and restore its services.
“We immediately launched an investigation and have identified a cyber security incident involving unauthorized access to our systems,” Gohlke said. “We took immediate steps to secure our systems and are working methodically to restore the involved services as quickly as possible.”
Equilend Cyber Attack Had ‘Limited Impact’
EquiLend, a major player in the securities-lending industry, is owned by a consortium of Wall Street firms including BlackRock and Bank of America. Its NGT trading platform is widely used by hedge funds and other investors for making short bets against securities.
In response to the EquiLend cyberattack on, FS-ISAC, a global consortium of financial institutions that shares cybersecurity intelligence, stated that the impact on financial market players has been limited.
Lockbit Ransomware Claims Responsibility for the Equilend Cyberattack
The cybercriminal syndicate gang LockBit has said that it was behind the equilend cybersecurity attack.
“On 22 January 2024, we identified a technical issue affecting parts of our systems. We launched an investigation and found a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorised access. Immediate measures were taken to secure our systems and we are diligently working to restore the affected services.”
A spokesperson for EquiLend stated:
The FS-ISAC spokesperson said the EquiLend cybersecurity incident impacted specific automated securities lending services, causing firms to adjust by moving to manual processes.
“The sector is monitoring for any ongoing issues,” the FS-ISAC spokesperson said, “and coordinating through our established incident response processes and resilience mechanisms to ensure firms have the information they need to mitigate potential impacts.”
US authorities are actively monitoring the equilend cyber attack.
“Treasury has been in close contact with key financial sector and regulatory leadership which are collectively monitoring the incident,”
Treasury spokesperson Christopher Hayden told CNN in a statement.
