At the end of every year, the WatchGuard Threat Lab predicts what types of cyber threats you should expect in the coming year. For 2019, one of our bolder predictions was to expect ransomware to target industrial control systems (ICS). Well, that prediction may have already hit with a ransomware attack against Norsk Hydro. Recently, this global aluminum smelting company notified the public that they have had a ransomware infection, which has affected their IT infrastructure worldwide. The infection was so bad that they had to revert to their manual smelting processes. So far, Norsk Hydro has not succumb to extortion and is recovering from the attack, but this is a good example of how ransomware authors are targeting business verticals that have critical uptime requirements. Watch the video below to learn a bit more about the incident, and if you’re an ICS organization, make sure you deploy the latest advanced anti-malware services.
Episode Runtime: 2:17
Direct YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2GizJcmeg8
EPISODE REFERENCES:
- Norsk Hydro aluminium manufacturer infected by ransomware – ZDNet
- Norsk Hydro’s blog post about the incident – Globe Newswire
- WatchGuard’s 2019 ICS ransomware prediction – WatchGuard
- UPDATE: Norsk Hydro repairs systems and investigates attack – WSJ