Sangoma Ransomware
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Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
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Just received this.
Dear Sangoma customer,
As you may be aware, Sangoma was the target of a ransomware attack that resulted in some of our confidential company data being posted online. I am writing to provide you with an update regarding our investigation into this cyber attack. As outlined in our Dec. 29 news release (which you can read by clicking here), the data stolen from Sangoma did, regrettably, include certain customer information.
Our investigation to date has found that the compromised data may include your ordering history with Sangoma and your company’s contact information (such as your company’s name, address, phone number, contact person at your company, email address, website, etc.). I’d like to reassure you that while our investigation is still ongoing, there is currently no evidence that the compromised customer information includes bank account or payment card data, since Sangoma does not generally store that information locally.
As our investigation progresses, we will be proactively and directly contacting any specific customers whose data has been compromised, in order to provide further information and appropriate support. Please note that you will only be contacted by Sangoma directly if your data has been compromised by this attack. If you do not hear from us directly, you can assume that we have found no evidence to indicate that your data has been compromised.
I also want to reassure you that you can continue to put your trust and confidence in Sangoma, and in our products and services. Normal business operations continue at Sangoma, so you can still use all of the usual methods to interact with us. Nothing has changed in how you order our products, contact us for support, make payments, or in our ability to ship you product or turn-up customers on our cloud services.
There is currently no evidence to suggest our products and services have been impacted by this cyber attack. We believe strongly that you can continue your use of our products without issue or interruption and that use of our products would not pose any security risk to your business. Even so, out of an abundance of caution, we continue to recommend that you practice good ‘security hygiene’. This includes regularly resetting your passwords (for administrator use of our products and for portal access), limiting remote access to only that which is necessary, keeping your Sangoma software up-to-date on the most recent versions, and monitoring for unauthorized access attempts.
On behalf of everyone at Sangoma, I want to apologize to you for the stress and inconvenience caused by this cyber attack. We are working around the clock, and have been throughout the entire holiday period, to mitigate and manage the impact of this incident. We have retained a leading team of third-party cybersecurity experts to help us with this effort, we have filed a report with law enforcement officials, and have also deployed additional security measures to assist in detecting and preventing any future attempts or incidents of unauthorized access to or malicious activity on our corporate network.
At Sangoma, we pride ourselves on our quality, professionalism, and customer focus. While this cyber-attack has been a difficult and, frankly, embarrassing challenge, it has done nothing to change our commitment to open and transparent communication with our customers – you are the lifeblood of our company and we value you immensely. You have my word that we will keep you updated with accurate and factual information, as it becomes available and appropriate to share, throughout our ongoing investigation. In the meantime, if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us using any of the methods you always have or at [email protected].
Thank you for your continued trust, support and patience.
Sincerely,
Bill Wignall
President & CEO
Sangoma Technologies
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@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.
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@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.
He has a monetized YouTube channel. He puts out a YouTube video with nothing but rampant speculation.
You want to tell me it was not revenue?
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Obviously we should never use Microsoft technologies again.
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@coliver said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Obviously we should never use Microsoft technologies again.
It's actually a way bigger deal that people have talked about. Closed source that's been exposed is the absolute most dangerous situation.
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@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.
He has a monetized YouTube channel. He puts out a YouTube video with nothing but rampant speculation.
You want to tell me it was not revenue?
Not at all. Go back and read my comment to confirm. What I am calling out is that, you offer your opinion freely even when you're being an ass about it. Often times it's warranted but it's still your opinion. Just because Chris has a monetized YT channel doesn't necessarily mean that what he presented was incorrect. Watch someone's YT channel...read their posts in a community, same thing. I seek out others' opinions to help inform mine. Your feedback as well as Chris' is valuable if it produces valuable discourse.
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@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.
He has a monetized YouTube channel. He puts out a YouTube video with nothing but rampant speculation.
You want to tell me it was not revenue?
Not at all. Go back and read my comment to confirm. What I am calling out is that, you offer your opinion freely even when you're being an ass about it. Often times it's warranted but it's still your opinion. Just because Chris has a monetized YT channel doesn't necessarily mean that what he presented was incorrect. Watch someone's YT channel...read their posts in a community, same thing. I seek out others' opinions to help inform mine. Your feedback as well as Chris' is valuable if it produces valuable discourse.
Money completely changes the equation. Chris monetization very likely changes his motives. It's like consultants who sell stuff along with their consulting - you can't really trust they are selling what you need, there's always the chance they are selling you what makes them money.
Of course it's always possible that the money doesn't change his position, but can you as the veiwer ever know that? -
@Dashrender said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@NashBrydges said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
Chris had only one actual goal by making that video when he did and as he did.
Revenue.
Opinions are like assholes...everybody's got one.
He has a monetized YouTube channel. He puts out a YouTube video with nothing but rampant speculation.
You want to tell me it was not revenue?
Not at all. Go back and read my comment to confirm. What I am calling out is that, you offer your opinion freely even when you're being an ass about it. Often times it's warranted but it's still your opinion. Just because Chris has a monetized YT channel doesn't necessarily mean that what he presented was incorrect. Watch someone's YT channel...read their posts in a community, same thing. I seek out others' opinions to help inform mine. Your feedback as well as Chris' is valuable if it produces valuable discourse.
Money completely changes the equation. Chris monetization very likely changes his motives. It's like consultants who sell stuff along with their consulting - you can't really trust they are selling what you need, there's always the chance they are selling you what makes them money.
Of course it's always possible that the money doesn't change his position, but can you as the veiwer ever know that?In this case, I'd say it's somewhere in the middle. Chris is motivated by money, potentially, to post "something". Maybe or maybe not he's motivated to say something specific. The YouTube monetization, which is ridiculously small even for a popular channel like his, does encourage you to be "chatty" and post speculation. So we have to understand that he has a bias to get out there and start talking about it, sure. But the opinion that he's stating (which I've not watched so I don't even know what it is) isn't necessarily influenced by that.
So it's an odd thing... it's not that this particular monetization would influence his opinion, but it would influence how early he's willing to share it publicly.
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To give a directly similar example, I'm about to post a video on the Apple M1 processor. It's early, early enough that I don't have one in hand yet (expected next month), so I'm posting about my opinion of the public data on the market. The YouTube algorithm makes it make sense for me to get out and discuss it early, before I have as much data as possible, and then to continue to revisit it later as I get more data. Chris is, I assume, in the same boat.
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@Dashrender said in Sangoma Ransomware:
It's like consultants who sell stuff along with their consulting - you can't really trust they are selling what you need, there's always the chance they are selling you what makes them money.
You can't trust consultants who are not selling something either because they might pick something that requires their services to install/use/administrate. They might select, not what is best for you, but what makes them the most money or what they are most familiar with.
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@Pete-S said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@Dashrender said in Sangoma Ransomware:
It's like consultants who sell stuff along with their consulting - you can't really trust they are selling what you need, there's always the chance they are selling you what makes them money.
You can't trust consultants who are not selling something either because they might pick something that requires their services to install/use/administrate. They might select, not what is best for you, but what makes them the most money or what they are most familiar with.
You can't trust anyone completely. But the experience/service bias exists in both cases, but the vendor rep bias, which is generally massively larger from a financial perspective, is one that you can completely avoid.
In many ways, experience bias is something that you want at least sometimes, vendor margin bias never is.
There's an additional difference, though. One bias is at least partially aligned to the customer, the other is always at odds with the customer. One bias is avoidable, one is not.
The unavoidable bias, by the nature of being unavoidable, also exists in an internal IT staff and even in non-IT staff including management (or owners.) It's sad that it has to exist, but it's the nature or humanity. But in reality, if I know product A and B well, and not C, and I know that A has worked well, and that B has not, and nothing of C, my customer will have benefit of my knowing something that works well, and something that doesn't, even if I can't answer about everything. Now if I'm good, I disclose that experience and the customer can determine the value or investigating C with me. If I'm bad, I could hide it, but being bad is different than a bias, that's just being bad at what we do.
But the big factor, the really huge one, is ethical here. A consultant has a bias, but is paid to represent the customer. They are the buyer's agent. A reseller is ethically tied to the vendors that they represent, they are a seller's agent. Even if it isn't written in a contract, the social contract says that they must represent the interest of their vendors. So ignoring personal biases, the much, much bigger issue is "when acting professionally and ethically, is the person/company working for the buyer or the seller?"
If I'm a reseller, I have an ethical and professional obligation to do what's right for the seller. If I'm a consultant, I have an ethical and professional obligation to do my best for the buyer. Everything else is bias, opinion, etc. But assuming all parties are ethical, professional, and trying their best to do their jobs, you get two completely different purposes and outcomes.
In the US, this is all codified in real estate law. IT is business and business is always caveat emptor, but the concept doesn't change, just the government doesn't step in to protect the consumer.
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Here is another way to look at it....
Customer goes to a Reseller and to a Consultant. They get two awful solutions that don't take care of the client at all. In fact, it's so bad, the customer feels that they can sue.
In the case of the reseller, the customer has no recourse. There is no social contract, no assumption of representation, no payment for advice. The customer is at "fault" for having gone to a seller's representative and falsely expected their own interests to be addressed. The lawsuit is frivolous and invalid.
In the case of the consultant, there is recourse (if you can prove the bias or negligence, of course.) There is a social contract, there is a direct assumption of representation, and there is a payment for advice. If that advice is intentionally bad (not just imperfect or accidental) then there is bad faith and the situation can be seen as malicious by a court.
Even on a legal basis, the two are very different things, even in IT where it is not codified and managed by a governing body.
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@scottalanmiller I think we have to differentiate between consultants and non-consultants as well.
An MSP by definition is not a consultant, they are a service provider. It's no different than a reseller because the MSP is selling their "managing" service.
A real consultants work is finished when the customer don't need to consult anymore, probably because he's made a decision.
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@Pete-S said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@scottalanmiller I think we have to differentiate between consultants and non-consultants as well.
An MSP by definition is not a consultant, they are a service provider. It's no different than a reseller because the MSP is selling their "managing" service.
A real consultants work is finished when the customer don't need to consult anymore, probably because he's made a decision.
I would argue that IT is all about decisions that have to be made constantly. MSPs sell a managed service, for sure. So does internal IT. I agree, MSP and consultant are different roles, but both are customer representative roles, not vendor representative roles.
That said, from what I've seen the majority of resellers masquerade as an MSP to downplay that they are resellers. My argument is that that's never actually an MSP, just services bundled in the resell agreement.
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@Pete-S said in Sangoma Ransomware:
It's no different than a reseller because the MSP is selling their "managing" service.
It's still polar opposites when we are talking about a true MSP and not a reseller hiding under the label. A real MSP is there to work for the customer, not a vendor. Now, that said, MSPs tend to bundle services under such a tight model that there is essentially no decision making to be had and the choice of MSP determines many decisions and therefore the IT decisions are made at the time of selecting the MSP. But within what little scope that they have, an MSP should always be acting in the interest of the customer.
But that scope can be ridiculously tiny. Whereas, in theory, a consultant might have a pretty complete scope (but not always.)
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Really the difference there... typically an MSP sets their scope (We do X and Y, if you pick up, you do so because you've chose X or Y as well.) and typically the customer sets a consultant's scope (you are here to tell us X or Y, and don't look at Z, we don't want to know what we've done wrong there.)
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@scottalanmiller please tag this post appropriately.
The OP is obviously incapable.
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@JaredBusch said in Sangoma Ransomware:
@scottalanmiller please tag this post appropriately.
The OP is obviously incapable.
Done
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Sangoma has relased an updated (and likely final) statement.
The second paragraph has the relevant information from an IT point of view.
