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IT systems belonging to the German copper producer Aurubis have been forcibly shut down after suffering a cyberattack on October 28th.
Aurubis is Europe’s largest copper producer and the second largest in the world, with 6,900 employees worldwide, producing one million tons of copper cathodes yearly. While the extent of the impact is currently being assessed, production has not been halted.
According to the company`s announcement, this attack appears to have been part of a larger attack on the metals and mining industry.
The production and environmental protection facilities at the smelter sites are running, and incoming and outgoing goods are also being maintained manually.
The company`s priority is to maintain the production volumes at the usual levels and keep the raw material supply and the delivery running smoothly. Some operations have turned to manual mode while the company and its customers turned to communicating mostly over the phone.
According to BleepingComputer, the attack has the typical signs of a ransomware attack, yet Aurubis has not provided any further details about the particularities of the cyberattack, nor if any specific group has claimed it.
The company has further announced that it is working with authorities and cybersecurity experts to investigate the incident and restore its systems as soon as possible.
Rising Threat
Ransomware cyberattacks targeted at companies around the world seem to be a growing concern that threaten to paralyze production and supply lines with more and more organizations getting hit by threat actors.
Before Aurubis, in 2019 Norwegian aluminum producer Norsk Hydro was forced to switch to manual operations following a ransomware campaign allegedly enforced by LockerGoga. Another example goes back to 2017, when the American pharmaceutical giant Merck lost $1.3 billion following a cyberattack.
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