Aluminum producer Norsk Hydro hit by a massive cyber attack

The giant of aluminum producers, Norway’s Norsk Hydro, announced on Tuesday that it had been hit by a cyber-attack of unknown origin.

One of the biggest Aluminum producer, the Norwegian Norsk Hydro, suffered an extensive cyber attack.

“Hydro became victim of an extensive cyberattack in the early hours of Tuesday, impacting operations in several of the company’s business areas,” reads a statement issued by the company.

The cyber attack caused production outages and affected operations across Europe and the U.S. The news of the incident caused a drop in the share price of 2.0 percent in early trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

The company defined the situation “quite severe,” its systems were infected with ransomware and the experts are still working to contain the threat.

According to the company spokesman Halvor Molland, it was too early to determine the full extent of the attack, at the time the source of the attack is still unknown.

“Our IT department is working to contain the impact” of the attack, the spokesman told AFP.

Norsk Hydro is assessing the affected systems, at the time it only confirmed that its potlines, which process molten aluminum and need to be kept running 24 hours a day, were forced to operate in manual mode.

“Some operations at plants where metal is fashioned into finished products for use in cars, planes and other manufactured goods, have been temporarily stopped, said spokesman Halvor Molland.” reported Bloomberg. “The company is doing everything possible to fix the problem, but isn’t ready to give any forecasts yet, he said by phone. Aluminum futures were little changed on the London Metal Exchange.”

The website of the company was down on Tuesday morning.

Norway’s National Security Authority (NSM) announced it is assisting Norsk Hydro.

“We are obviously trying to identify whether it will spread, but we have not detected anything yet,” NSM’s communications director Mona Strom Arnoy said.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Norsk Hydro, cybersecurity)

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