Pierluigi Paganini
March 13, 2022
LockBit ransomware gang claimed to have compromised the network of Bridgestone Americas, one of the largest manufacturers of tires, and stolen data from the company.
The Bridgestone Americas family of enterprises includes more than 50 production facilities and 55,000 employees throughout the Americas.
Lockbit operators plan to release the stolen data by March 15, 2022 23:59, if the company will not pay the ransom.
On February 27, some company employees at Bridgestone’s La Vergne plant reported being sent home due to a possible cyber attack. Bridgestone launched an investigation into the incident and hired a prominent consultant firm to understand the full scope and nature of the incident.
“Bridgestone Americas are currently investigating a potential information security incident. Since learning of the potential incident in the early morning hours of February 27, we have launched a comprehensive investigation to quickly gather facts while working to ensure the security of our IT systems. Out of an abundance of caution, we disconnected many of our manufacturing and retreading facilities in Latin America and North America from our network to contain and prevent any potential impact.” read Bridgestone’s full statement published by NewsChannel5. “Until we learn more from this investigation, we cannot determine with certainty the scope or nature of any potential incident, but we will continue to work diligently to address any potential issues that may affect our operations, our data, our teammates, and our customers.”
Lockbit continues to be one of the most active ransomware operations at this time, unlike other groups, it pointed out that it is an apolitical group and is only interested in money.
“Many people ask us, will our international community of post-paid pentesters, threaten the west on critical infrastructure in response to cyber aggression against Russia?
Our community consists of many nationalities of the world, most of our pentesters are from the CIS including Russians and Ukrainians, but we also have Americans, Englishmen, Chinese, French, Arabs, Jews, and many others in our team. Our programmers developers live permanently around the world in China, the United States, Canada, Russia and Switzerland. Our servers are located in the Netherlands and the Seychelles, we are all simple and peaceful people, we are all Earthlings.” reads a statement published by the group on its Tor leaksite. “For us it is just business and we are all apolitical. We are only interested in money for our harmless and useful work. All we do is provide paid training to system administrators around the world on how to properly set up a corporate network. We will never, under any circumstances, take part in cyber-attacks on critical infrastructures of any country in the world or engage in any international conflicts.”
In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a flash alert containing technical details and indicators of compromise associated with LockBit ransomware operations.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Lockbit)
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