Advanced Technology Ventures is a Silicon Valley venture capital company with assets of more than $1.8 million. In July, a ransomware attack saw cybercriminals steal private information from the limited partners (LPs) and investors.ATV wrote to the Maine attorney generals' office claiming that it was made aware of the ransomware attack on July 9, when its servers storing financial data were encrypted. ATV discovered that the data had been taken from the servers prior to the encryption. This is a common double extortion technique used by ransomware organizations, who then threaten to publish files online if they don't receive the ransom.ATV claimed that the email addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers of individual investors in ATV's funds were all stolen by the letter. According to the Maine attorney generals data breaches notification portal, the incident affected 300 people, one of which was in Maine.Venture capital firms don't often disclose the names of all their LPs, the investors who have invested millions in an investment vehicle to the general public. Although some names may be pre-approved, most private investors will keep the announcement private. There are many reasons for this, but they all boil down to secrecy, competitive advantage, and the desire to keep their investors private. Investors may not want other investors to know where their money is. The key information about how venture money works was likely stolen in this attack.ATV stated that it had notified FBI about the attack. TechCrunch reached out to the FBI spokesperson but he did not respond immediately. TechCrunch's Monday questions to Mike Carusi, ATVs managing Director, were not answered by him.Venture capital firm based in Menlo Park (California) with offices in Boston was established in 1979. It primarily invests in technology, communications and software, as well as healthcare technology. It was an early investor in many startups over the past decade, including software library Fandango and Host Analytics (now Planfun), and Apptegic, (now Evergage). Recent investments include Tripwire which was later sold for $710 million to cybersecurity company Belden; Cedexis which was a startup that monitors network traffic and was acquired by Cisco in 2018, and Actifo which was sold to Google 2020.Natasha Mascarenhas contributed reporting. You can send tips securely via Signal or WhatsApp to +1 646-755-88949 SecureDrop allows you to send TechCrunch files and documents.
