One of the world’s largest defence and space contractors, Boeing revealed that it was busy investigating into a cyber incident that impacted elements of its parts and distribution business and cooperating with a law enforcement probe into it.
The company said that the LockBit cybercrime gang admitted that it had stolen “a tremendous amount” of sensitive data from the US plane maker that it would dump online if Boeing didn’t pay ransom by the 2nd of November.
A spokesman from Boeing said that the threat does not affect the flight safety. “We are actively investigating the incident and coordinating with law enforcement and regulatory authorities. We are notifying our customers and suppliers.” – the spokesperson added.
According to the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa), the hacking group, LockBit was the most active global ransomware group last year based on the number of victims, and it has hit 1 700 US organisations since 2020.
On a normal basis, LockBit deploys ransomware on a victim organisation’s system to lock it up, as well as stealing sensitive data for extortion. It is not yet clear as to what the group may have stolen from Boeing. According to Tech Central, Brett Callow, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said that while organisations may pay cybercriminal gangs when demanded ransom, that doesn’t guarantee that data won’t be leaked.
“Paying the ransom would simply elicit a pinky promise from LockBit that they will destroy whatever data they obtained,” Callow said. “There would, however, be no way of knowing for sure that they actually had.”
