European arms manufacturer MBDA denies that its systems have been hacked. However, the company's Italian branch does confirm that data has been stolen. The arms manufacturer that primarily develops missiles for land air and naval forces claims that the organization is being blackmailed. The moment MBDA indicated it would not pay a ransom, the cybercrime group allegedly distributed the stolen information on the Internet.
The consolidation between Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo reports that criminals did not hack its well-secured network. Instead, they allegedly gained access to an external hard drive. How this could happen is still unclear. There is speculation that a hacker gained access to an employee's personal device and managed to steal the information.
Andrastea, sometimes also Adrestea, as the hacker group calls itself, made the leak public in late July through the Russian hacker forum XSS. Here, the group described itself as a group of independent cybersecurity specialists and researchers.
Andrastea is offering 60 GB of confidential company data for sale on the forum. This would include both employee and military project information, including air defense and missile designs, videos and photos and correspondence with other companies such as Rampini, ST Electronics and Thales.
As evidence, Andrastea shared a link to an encrypted file containing some of the stolen documents. It also gave the password used to open the file.
MBDA has already called in the Italian authorities. It would take all possible legal action to fix the problem. Also, the company reports that Andrastea is lying about the data it stole. In fact, it would not be classified or sensitive data.
