The US investigates a massive cyberattack on 200 companies

Kaseya, a

company

that provides services to more than 40,000 organizations around the world, is investigating a possible massive cyberattack on their systems,

reported this Saturday

The company urged customers using its systems management platform, called the VSA, to immediately shut down their servers to avoid the possibility of being compromised by attackers.

"We are experiencing a potential attack against the VSA that has been limited to a small number of local customers only," the company posted on its website, according to the Post, referring to organizations that maintain their software in their own companies rather than host it with a cloud provider. "We are in the process of investigating the root cause of the incident with the utmost vigilance."

John Hammond, a researcher at the cybersecurity company Huntress Labs, said that at least eight companies that provide security or technological tools for hundreds of other small businesses could have been "compromised" by the Kaseya attack, the New York newspaper added. Another 200 could be in danger and would have been asked for rewards worth five million dollars. He specified that REvil, a Russian cybercriminal group that the FBI said was behind the piracy of the world's largest meat processor, JBS, which occurred in May, could be responsible for this new attack.

"Kaseya handles companies large and small globally, so ultimately it has the potential to expand to companies of any size or scale," said Hammond. "This is a colossal and devastating attack on the supply chain," he stressed. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also described the incident in a statement on its website as a "

supply chain

attack

." He urged Kaseya's clients to shut down their servers and said he was investigating.