Since Rheinmetall's Vehicle Systems, Weapon and Ammunition departments are well protected against cyber attacks, attackers attack various subsidiaries in the civilian division and have probably also paralyzed some of them. That sounds like a classic supply chain attack.
To date, there is no information about the cyber attack on the Rheinmetall website or on the subpages of the subsidiaries. But according to Spiegel and other media, various subsidiaries have been hit by cyber attacks. It should be loud Echo24.de a Rheinmetall spokesman confirmed the IT incident in the group's civilian business. Rheinmetall's Vehicle Systems, Weapon and Ammunition departments, which are probably the most coveted by hackers, are not affected by the incident.
Various subsidiaries affected
These are said to be manufacturers of products in the automotive sector, such as the Kolbenschmidt company in Neckarsulm. Some systems are said to have failed there. The Pierburg subsidiary in Neuss is said to have sent all employees home on Friday April 14.04th. However, no further information is given there either.
Who is behind the attacks can not be found on the relevant leak pages of the hackers. People there like to boast immediately that a company has been hacked. Other security specialists have not yet evaluated the current facts as to whether the attack could be a supply chain attack. The attackers always aim at the weakest link or links in the chain. Once you have penetrated a company, the attackers try to sneak into other delivery partner networks from there. Hackers may have calculated that one of the routes could lead to Rheinmetall's main network.
Was this a supply chain attack?
The Rheinmetall company had already suffered from an attack at the beginning of the year, but according to its own statements it successfully repelled it. Nevertheless, the subsidiaries will suffer from the attacks that have been successful against them. Other companies usually struggle for months with insecure systems and sometimes have to set up entire IT subsystems from scratch or even replace the hardware. Even specialists like that international IT service provider Materna was the victim of a cyber attack. Four weeks after the incident at the end of March, the company is still dealing with the consequences.
Editor/sel
To Rheinmetall.com