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IT services firm Cognizant has responded to a lawsuit filed against it by bleach manufacturer Clorox, after it accused the IT firm of being responsible for a 2023 cyber attack.
Earlier this week, Clorox filed a lawsuit against Cognizant following a 2023 cyber attack through which threat actors used credentials to log into the cleaning product maker’s systems and launch a ransomware.
The lawsuit alleges that the threat actor simply asked the Cognizant service desk, which was provided for use by Clorox, for the credentials.
“Cognizant repeatedly gave a cyber criminal access to Clorox’s network by handing them credentials without properly authenticating them or otherwise following Clorox’s process,” Clorox said.
“Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques. The cyber criminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox’s network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over.”
However, in an extended statement, Cognizant has bit back at Clorox’s claims, denying that it was to blame for the incident and that it was instead the fault of Clorox’s lacklustre cyber teams.
“It is shocking that a corporation the size of Clorox had such an inept internal cyber security system to mitigate this attack,” Cognizant said.
“Clorox has tried to blame us for these failures, but the reality is that Clorox hired Cognizant for a narrow scope of help desk services, which Cognizant reasonably performed,” the company added, the same words as in the statement seen by Reuters and reported by Cyber Daily this week.
Clorox’s lawsuit, which was filed in the California Superior Court, is suing the company for US$380 million, the amount the company suffered in damages as a result of the cyber attack.
The total of US$380 million in damages was largely as a result of Clorox’s inability to ship its product to retailers, leading to a halt in sales. However, US$50 million of the total was spent in the company’s recovery process.
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