Any type of company can become a victim of a cyberattack. Web application security specialists report that Rheinmetall, a German-based manufacturer of weapons and car parts, has suffered a malware attack that has disrupted its production in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and the US. “Our production processes are experiencing severe disruptions,” says a statement from the company.
Due to these failures, the company’s shares
fell at the start of this day on the stock exchange. Rheinmetall shares, which
had increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of 2019, fell by 2.9% this Friday
morning.
Peter Ruecker, the company’s representative,
says the company’s web application security teams have already shut down all
compromised IT infrastructure; “It’s also getting its full rebuild
ready,” the spokesman says.
Major European companies in critical industrial
areas, such as the production of machinery and armament, are becoming the main
targets of threat actors’ groups.
A couple of days ago, the AFP news agency
reported a series of cyberattacks against the French company Airbus.
Apparently, these attacks were carried out through the IT systems of some of
its security service providers; some reports from web application security
experts point to the alleged involvement of hacker groups backed by the Chinese
government.
Another important antemetential occurred in
Germany, when BASF, Henkel and Siemens
revealed a series of attacks against their computer systems. Several months
earlier a group of German journalists had already revealed this incident, as
well as attributed responsibility to Chinese government-related hackers.
Rheinmetall estimates that the disruption in
its systems will last between three weeks and a month; so far, it has been
estimated that the incident will have a financial impact of between 3 and 4
million euros for each week that the company’s systems are out of operation.
“However, we would like to point out that deliveries will be made
according to the dates set before the incident,” Ruecker added.
The spokesman also mentioned that the web
domain affected during the incident was disconnected from Rheinmetall’s
corporate network. Finally, the company representative noted that only
operations in the automotive industry were affected, so Rheinmetall’s armament
operations are completely secure, although the company’s experts maintain
strict monitoring to prevent future incidents.
International Institute of Cyber Security
(IICS) web application security experts mention that state-sponsored hacking
attacks are becoming one of the main threats to private companies and critical
government infrastructure, as they have great disruption capacity and it is
virtually impossible to foresee such threats. To date, significant such
incidents have been reported, perhaps the most prominent being those that
occurred in Ukraine, when hackers allegedly hired by the Kremlin managed to
generate a massive disruption in the electricity service of a important portion
of the country.
