Toll Group shuts down some online systems after ransomware attack

The Australian transportation and logistics giant Toll Group has suffered a ransomware attack that forced it to shut down part of its services.

The Australian transportation and logistics giant Toll Group was victim of a ransomware attack, in response to the incident the company has shut down some of its online services.

The Toll Group is an Australian transportation and logistics company with operations in road, rail, sea, air, and warehousing, it is a subsidiary of Japan Post Holdings and has over 44,000 employees.

The attack was discovered on January 31 when the internal staff detected a piece of ransomware on its systems. In order to mitigate the threat, the personnel isolated some systems to avoid malware propagation and potential data.

The company published a security breach notice on its website the same day, but it provided further details some days later.

“As a result of our decision to disable certain systems following a recent cyber security threat, we’re continuing to meet the needs of many of our customers through a combination of manual and automated processes across our global operations, although some are experiencing delay or disruption. For our parcels customers, all of our processing centres are continuing to operate including pick up, processing and dispatch albeit at reduced speed in some cases.” reads a data breach notification published by the company on its website.

“We can confirm the cyber security incident is due to a targeted ransomware attack which led to our decision to immediately isolate and disable some systems in order to limit the spread of the attack.”

The company declared that it has seen no evidence to suggest any personal data has been exfiltrated. The Toll Group has reported the incident to the authorities, an investigation is still ongoing.

1/2 As a precautionary measure, Toll has made the decision to shut down a number of systems in response to a cyber security incident. Several Toll customer-facing applications are impacted as a result. Our immediate priority is to resume services to customers as soon as possible.

— Toll Group (@Toll_Group) February 3, 2020

2/2 … As we continue to make progress in restoring customer facing applications and services in the coming days, we will provide further advice on expected timeframes. We will continue to provide regular updates. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

— Toll Group (@Toll_Group) February 3, 2020

While the systems were off-line, the customers were not able to track their shipments.

It's beyond a joke at this point. I have called Toll 4 times so far and they can't tell me where my parcel is so I can collect it. It's one thing to take down PUBLIC access to the tracking data. That their own staff can't access the Tracking Database is highly unusual.

— mockier (@mockier) February 2, 2020

The company confirmed that the attack was targeted, but at the time it is unclear what ransomware family infected the systems at the Toll Group.

Toll Group is currently working on restoring affected systems, it is only accepting orders via phone.

“We’re working with relevant authorities and have referred the matter to the appropriate bodies for criminal investigation. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work to our current processes in order to meet the needs of our customers.” continues the company.

“For our parcels customers, all of our processing centres are continuing to operate including pick up, processing and dispatch albeit at reduced speed in some cases,” “Most other Toll operations are continuing to operate on manual systems based on our business continuity plans.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Toll Group, hacking)

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