Hackers targeted the heavy industry ThyssenKrupp and stole industrial secrets

Alleged Asian hackers have targeted the German heavy industry giant ThyssenKrupp to steal company secrets.

Hackers from Southeast Asia targeted the German heavy industry giant ThyssenKrupp in the attempt of obtaining “technological know-how and research results.”

The news was announced on Thursday by a company spokesman that confirmed a report in the Wirschaftswoche weekly and added that the company as successfully repelled the attack.

The cyber attack was discovered by the IT security office, which spotted the hacking activities while they were ongoing and blocked them.

“The attack is over and had been repelled,” said the company spokesman.

The investigators speculate the attack was carried out by a group of professional hackers from Southeast Asia that is interested in the technological know-how and research activities of the company.

At the time I was writing there are no further details of the cyber attack nor the exact nature of the attackers (i.e. nation-state actors, cybercriminals).

The hackers launched a “massive cyber attack” against the divisions dealing with orders planning of industrial plants, the conglomerate’s Industrial Solutions, and Steel Europe business divisions.

Critical IT systems at the ThyssenKrupp such as the Marine Systems business unit and blast furnaces and power plants in Duisburg, were not affected

The ThyssenKrupp Marine should be a privileged target for hackers because it is the division that builds warships, including submarines for the German and Israeli navies.

The company excluded any sabotage or manipulation of data or applications, but it was unable to estimate if a limited portion of data, “data fragments,” had been stolen by the hackers.

“Experts say that in the complex IT landscapes of large companies, it is currently virtually impossible to provide viable protection against organized, highly professional hacking attacks,” the company added.

Stay tuned.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – ThyssenKrupp, hacking)

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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”.