‘Time-Travelling’ Software Could Bankrupt Hackers

A leading technology company says it has created a cutting-edge data storage system that allows users to “go back in time” and retrieve data held hostage by hackers.
Ionir is a cloud-based data services platform, with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, which provides “the new standard of data services and data management for a hybrid and multi-cloud world.”
In an interview with National Security News, Ionir’s Chief Executive Officer Jacob Cherian spoke about the company’s unique way of thwarting “ransomware” attacks, the employment of malware of malicious software by cybercriminals to restrict users’ access to their data unless the attackers’ demands are met.
These types of attacks will cost victims an estimated $265 billion annually by 2031, according to cybercrime research organization Cybersecurity Ventures, with attacks on individuals or organizations occurring every two seconds on average.
Significant damage has already been caused by such methods, including the 2021 Colonial Pipeline attack, which targeted America’s largest pipeline system for refined oil products.
This forced a six-day shutdown of the pipeline as the company attempted to fix the impacted computer systems, and caused President Joe Biden to declare a state of emergency in 17 states, during which regulations for drivers carrying gasoline and other fuels were relaxed in order to combat the resulting fuel shortages across the country.
In this case, Colonial Pipeline was forced to pay the hackers $4.4 million worth of Bitcoin in exchange for a decryption tool to access their stolen data.
However, Ionir believes its ability to restore data to the moments before it was stolen or corrupted could make such devastating attacks a thing of the past.
“Any data that’s stored with us, you can go back in time and get the data back the way it was the second before. We can actually replay the way your data was from any second in the past,” Cherian said.
According to Ionir’s website, this unique capability to provision data at any point in time is thanks to the software’s 1-second recovery point objective (RPO), the age of files in backup storage which can be recovered if stolen, damaged, or corrupted.
“If I get hacked at say 3pm in the afternoon, I can go back to 2.59 minutes and 59 seconds and get all my data that I backed up,” Cherian said. “And then from that, once you have a copy of the data, then it’s your internal operational processes or whatever you have to bring your applications up and running, very quickly.”
According to NSN, Ionir has secured a U.S. patent for its digital storage technology and is now concentrating on expanding its operations.
“This is an arms race between the people who are trying to defend against malware and the people who are building it,” Cherian said. “So, you have to assume that there’s always going to be an intrusion.”
Ionir told NSN that their backdating technology was employed by a police department in New England, who purchased it from Ionir’s predecessor following a ransomware attack on the precinct.
“Three months later, the police department was attacked by ransomware and 911 was down, all the emergency services were down,” Cherian said. “They were able to bring it up within 30 minutes – that is how quick this product can work.”
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