Web application security testing experts reported that ASCO Industries, a worldwide leading aircraft parts manufacturing company, has become the new victim of a ransomware attack. According to reports, most of the company’s systems, based in Zaventem, Belgium, were affected by the infection, leading to a long period of inactivity in the IT infrastructure of all ASCO plants.
Inactivity at the company’s plants caused more
than a thousand out of the 1,500 employees at ASCO’s headquarters in Belgium to
be sent back to their homes, as there were no optimal conditions to maintain
operations. The aviation parts manufacturer reported that over the next week
the operations will remain suspended; this measure also extends to the company’s
facilities in the United States, Germany and Canada.
On the other hand, the company’s plants in
France and Brazil operate normally. Vicky Welvaert, the company’s director of
Human Resources, said, “We have filed a request for temporary interruption
of work activities for this incident that has overcome us”.
The company’s web application security testing
specialists say that data protection and law enforcement authorities have
already been notified; ASCO has also contracted the services of an external
information security company to implement the necessary fixes to its systems as
quickly as possible.
“We have informed all competent
authorities in the area of cybercrime, plus we are working with external web
application security testing professionals; we’ll keep monitoring the situation
until we correct the inconveniences and restore our systems completely,”
added a company spokesman.
So far, ASCO has not revealed further technical
details about the incident, such as the ransomware variant used by threat
actors, the recovery process performed by the company, or the actual scope of
the incident.
The most relevant manufacturing companies have
become one of the main targets of ransomware campaign operators. A couple of
months ago, researchers at the International Cyber Security Institute (IICS)
reported an encryption malware attack on the systems of Norsk
Hydro, one of the world’s leading aluminum-producing companies; in
total, the company had to invest more than $40 M USD in the recovery process.
