Hacks into several German industrial majors thought to be from China

Several large German industrial organizations manufacturing blue chips, namely Henkel, Siemens and BASF together with several others recently confirmed cyber attacks which had targeted them.

According to ARD a public broadcaster, the attackers employed Winnti, a kind of malicious software that enables hackers gain remote access to the PC-network of their victims. ARD stated that analysts of the malicious software revealed that the group, which targeted the organizations, possibly carried out tasks on behalf of the government of China. www.reuters.com posted this, July 24, 2019.

ARD reported that besides the German organizations mentioned above, firms including Marriott the hotels group, Roche the drug maker, Shin-Etsu the chemicals group, Sumitomo the conglomerate and Lion Air the airlines too got victimized of the hackers' attacks.

Previously during 2019, Bayer the drug manufacturer stated that it got control over a cyber assault, which according to the company, originated from China, outlining how big enterprises faced the danger of disruption as well as data theft. The hackers, by employing malware Winnti, had seemingly acquired admission into Bayer's network previously during 2018 through means of espionage. The drug maker stated that it was on joint tasks with officials within Switzerland, Europe and USA over cyber-security dangers while told their experiences of "ongoing threats" and related information to other pharma and non-pharma companies.

While Henkel the shampoo maker, Siemens the industrial conglomerate and Roche the Swiss pharma organization confirmed about Winnti affecting them, Covestro and BASF confirmed they'd been attacked.

While according to Roche, it managed identifying the Winnti assault and even sidetracking the same; however acknowledged it had been targeted with other assaults. Fortunately for Roche, it didn't lose any confidential personal details about its employees, business partners, customers or patients.

Each of the organizations named stated it didn't lose any sensitive information, although none remarked on if the assaults were from Chinese hackers. Marriott, Lion Air, Sumitomo, Shin-Etsu and Valve refrained from giving their comments.

It's thought that the Winnti attackers have their base inside China, and their beginning was by compromising companies providing Internet games, the majority of them in Asia to grab the source code of those games.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/8/2019