Cyber Crime

German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall suffered Black Basta ransomware attack

The German automotive and arms manufacturer Rheinmetall announced it was victim of a Black Basta ransomware attack that took place last month.

Rheinmetall is a German automotive and arms manufacturer that is listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange. The company this week announced it was victim of a ransomware attack conducted by the Black Basta ransomware group.

The incident took place in Mid-April and impacted the business unit that serves industrial customers, particularly in the automotive sector. The defense division of the company was not impacted by the ransomware attack as reported after the discovery of the incident by Rheinmetall’s spokesperson Oliver Hoffmann.

The automotive and arms manufacturer launched an investigation into the incident with the help of cybersecurity authorities.

The company filed a criminal complaint with the Cologne public prosecutor’s office.

The company is still working to completely recover from the security breach.

In March, the pro-Russian hacker group Killnet called to cyber arms on his Telegram channel against the company IT infrastructure in Germany and Australia after Rheinmetall announced a new tank factory in Ukraine as the Russian invasion of the Eastern European nation continues.

The company is a supplier of weaponry used on the Leopard tank which were sent to Ukraine by several European countries.

On September 2019, a series of cyber attacks hit defense contractors Rheinmetall AG and Defence Construction Canada (DCC) damaging their information technology systems.

Black Basta has been active since April 2022, like other ransomware operations, it implements a double-extortion attack model.  

In November 2022, Sentinel Labs researchers reported having found evidence that links the Black Basta ransomware gang to the financially motivated hacking group FIN7.

In November 2022, experts at the Cybereason Global SOC (GSOC) team observed a surge in Qakbot infections as part of an ongoing aggressive Qakbot malware campaign that leads to Black Basta ransomware infections in the US.

In two weeks, the experts observed attacks against more than 10 different US-based customers

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Balck Basta)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.

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