The American aircraft manufacturer Boeing announced Thursday that it was the victim of a hack targeting its spare parts service, ensuring that flight safety was not affected.
• Read also: ‘Extremely unusual’: Emergency flight organized for sumo group too heavy to fly
“We are aware of a cybersecurity incident that is affecting our parts and distribution business,” a spokesperson said.
“This issue does not affect flight safety,” he said, adding “actively investigating this incident” in coordination with law enforcement and regulatory authorities.
“We inform our customers and our suppliers,” he said.
The internet page devoted to this activity displayed on Thursday sometimes a blank page indicating in one corner “site closed for technical problems”, sometimes a page with a construction helmet stamped “Boeing” specifying among other things to expect the site to be available again “soon”.
According to several media outlets, a group of hackers called Lockbit issued an ultimatum on Friday, giving Boeing until November 2 to pay a ransom. Otherwise, it would make public “sensitive data that has been exfiltrated”.
In November 2022, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) called Lockbit ransomware “the most active and destructive variant in the world”.
According to a website of the American authorities referring in mid-June to data from the FBI federal police, the group – which appeared around January 2020, ransomware written in Russian – carried out more than 1,700 attacks against victims in the United States. United and around the world (Australia, Canada, New Zealand in particular) and would have collected approximately $91 million in ransoms in total.