Stock in the Channel pulls website amid cyberattack – Source: go.theregister.com

A UK-based multinational that provides tech stock availability tools is telling customers that its website outage is due to a cyber attack.

Stock in the Channel (STIC) provides a “digital platform” that lets users – mostly managed service providers and resellers – “view accurate stock and prices for over 3.1m IT products from 34 distributors.”

The organization’s servers were taken down late into Tuesday evening, and at the time of writing its website remains unreachable. As of Wednesday, its email and phone lines were still operational.

From early this morning, the company’s website says of the attack: “On Tuesday evening we underwent a ransomware attack from a sophisticated group of criminal hackers who gained access to our systems by exploiting a zero day vulnerability in one of the 3rd party applications we use.

“The attackers caused extensive damage to our infrastructure which we have been working around the clock to repair. There is currently no evidence a data breach has occurred and we have been able to [recover] all our critical data. Our service is now partially operational. We will be continuing today to restore normal operation, during this time stock and price data may not be up to date.”

According to website and app development company Tigren, which claims to have worked on the company’s infrastructure, SITC is essentially a stock search engine available to channel companies in 22 countries. 

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It has more than 60,000 registered users and upwards of 25,000 registered customers across Europe, North America, and Australia.

STIC did not respond to The Register’s request – sent yesterday – for more information. Asked about the disruption, the sales team declined to comment and told us to wait for official comment from management.

At present, sources say the company does not believe any customer data was compromised.

Across millions of product listings, SITC – under normal circumstances – also allows customers to share and sell IT hardware, as well as find the best places to buy it. ®