Belgian aerospace manufacturer ASCO Industries has closed several factories due to a ransomware attack on June 7. ASCO, a maker of aircraft parts and equipment, is in the process of being acquired by Wichita, Kan.-based Spirit AeroSystems. The company had a ransomware attack and says it has outside help to deal with the situation. It is also reported ASCO has shut down some of its Belgian factories, which left more than 1,000 people without work. Reports indicate the attack came through Spirit AeroSystems network.
A statement released by ASCO said this:
“Asco has become victim of a large scale ransomware attack. This attack caused a serious disruption on all of our activities and impacted our available communication means. As a precautionary measure all systems have been quarantined and the activities at all of our sites in Belgium, Canada, the United States and Germany were stopped.
Together with the relevant authorities, forensic and technical IT experts, our teams have taken control over the incident and are committed to reduce the consequent impact on the business activities. It is because of the specific nature of the attack that we want to assess every individual IT system not to compromise security, whilst guaranteeing the sustainability and quality of the solution and mitigation actions that are put in place. We take an approach of extreme caution as we cannot accept an impact on the security of the systems.
With the help of external expertise, we installed several work streams to allow a safe and secure restoration of our systems in the different sites. We are now gradually rolling out our business continuity strategy in order to restore operations. The forensics investigation is ongoing and to date this analysis has not identified evidence of the exfiltration of any information or the non-recoverable loss of it.”