Nearly 1,000 employees sent home for the entire week, on paid leave after ransomware got control over the network of one of the world’s largest suppliers of airplane parts located in Belgium named ASCO.
The infection took place at June, and initially hit the company’s plant in Belgium, but ASCO decided to shut down factories in Germany, Canada, and the US as well.
ASCO-made parts are used for the F-35 fighter jet as well as Airbus and Boeing commercial passenger jets.
Asco has not provided any detail of what type of ransomware was involved, but said that “because of the specific nature of the attack”, the company wanted to assess every individual IT system in an attempt to avoid compromising security, while guaranteeing the “sustainability and quality” of the mitigation actions so they had to shutdown the worldwide network while examining each of the parts.
The company said the forensics investigation is ongoing, but noted that there has been no evidence of the exfiltration of any information or the non-recoverable loss of it.
Podemos is a left wing political party in Spain founded in January 2014 by Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the protests against inequality and corruption in Spain. The party filed a complaint in the police earlier this year reporting that a security camera installed by the authorities outside the family home of the group’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, had been hacked, and that footage was being streamed live on a publicly accessible website.
The Interior Ministry, which was first alerted about the incident, has confirmed the report.
Investigators have traced the hackers back to a server in Singapore, but have been unable to identify the perpetrators, said a ministry spokesperson. Podemos has been the target of several espionage operations, some of which were launched by the Spanish Interior Ministry itself. Attempts to find evidence that might damage the party’s image began ahead of the general election of December 20, 2015, when Podemos was soaring in opinion polls. Spaniards ultimately made the party the third-largest political force in parliament, undermining the traditional two-party system dominated till that time. with todays landscape of every elections getting filled with fake news and bots that divert conversations to the lowest standards, Podemos party is going to become more and more attractive target for their opponents who will try to undermine them to take back votes on the next elections.
Its always good time to start exploring how proactive security measures can help organizations to defend against the most advanced threats out there.
That’s it for this podcast, stay safe and see you in the next podcast.
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