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Suspected industrial espionage: Hackers apparently attacked Airbus suppliers

2019-09-26T16:31:54.996Z


In recent months, Airbus has been affected by four major hacker attacks, reports a news agency. Gateway for the attacks were therefore partner companies of the group.



The European aviation group Airbus has apparently become the target of serious cyber attacks four times in the past twelve months. The hackers had taken suppliers such as the engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce targeted to gain access to documents of the Group, the news agency AFP learned from security and industry circles. In the search for the authors of the attacks, the investigators could not provide any secure information. However, insiders may find China-led industrial espionage possible.

AFP spoke with seven sources familiar with the case, stating that there were four major hacker attacks on Airbus suppliers over the course of a year. As with the aviation industry, Airbus is generally considered an endangered target for hacker attacks. The European group is one of the largest manufacturers of commercial aircraft and is also an important military outfitters.

In January admitted an attack

Airbus itself had announced in January to have been affected by an attack. According to the information, there had been unauthorized access to data. Whether it was a targeted attack on specific data, should be investigated. To a limited extent, personal data was accessed, it was said at that time.

Among the affected suppliers, of which AFP now reports, should be next to Rolls-Royce, inter alia, the French technology consulting firm Expleo. The target of hackers is also said to have become two other French suppliers whose names are not yet known.

Expleo wanted to "neither confirm nor deny" the information. Rolls Royce did not specifically comment on possible attacks, but said it knew of "trying to gain access to our network." There is a special team of experts for this. Airbus also did not initially respond to a request for the case.

Small companies as a "better destination"

The attack on the French company Expleo was apparently discovered at the end of last year, but was back there some time ago. The attackers targeted a virtual private network (VPN), a communication system that connected the company to Airbus. Other attacks evidently followed a similar pattern.

"Very large companies are well protected and it's hard to attack them," said Romain Bottan of BoostAerospace, a company specializing in aviation safety, "small companies are the better target."

Specializing in cybersecurity, Proofpoint said it was a very complex mission for Airbus to protect itself from such a large number of suppliers. "The doors are closed, so they come in through the window," said Loic Guézo of Proofpoint. "And when they are closed, they try it through the chimney."

Who is behind it is unclear

The attackers were in the security circles, especially in the search for technical documents for the certification of aircraft, but also according to information on the motorization of the military aircraft A400M and the A350 machine. With reference to the difficulty of finding and tracking such attacks, the sources did not want to commit to authors.

However, they were in agreement that Chinese hackers could at least potentially be responsible, and some had a hacker group with links to the Communist Party in their sights.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2019-09-26

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