The US arm of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has reportedly paid a ransom to restore its systems after a hack attack last week that disrupted trading in US Treasuries.
The blackout at ICBC’s US broker-dealer left it temporarily owing BNY Mellon $9 billion, an amount many times larger than its net capital.
The hackers are believed to have gained access to ICBC's tech stack through exploitation of vulnerabilities in the Citrix NetScaler product family.
Payment of the ransom was claimed by the notorious LockBit gang, in a statement which Reuters was unable to independently verify.
“They paid a ransom, deal closed,” the LockBit representative said via Tox, an online messaging app.
LockBit has made over 1400 attacks against US victims, according to the Department of Justice, and earlier this year hit trading tech firm ION, which also shelled out to get its system back online.