Cyber gang demands baguettes after data theft at Schneider Electric
The criminal organization Hellcat claims to have broken into Schneider Electric's IT system. It is demanding a ransom to delete stolen data.
Baguettes are a rather unusual demand from cyber criminals.
(Image: heise online / dmk)
A cyber incident has apparently occurred at industrial technology company Schneider Electric. Criminals claim to have broken into the company's IT systems and stolen large amounts of data. They are demanding a ransom.
(Image:Â Screenshot / dmk)
The perpetrators have published a ransom demand on the darknet site of the criminal online group Hellcat. According to this, they have gained access to Schneider Electric's Atlassian Jira system and extracted critical data from it, including projects, problems and plug-ins as well as 400,000 database rows of user data with a total volume of more than 40Â GByte of compressed data.
Unusual ransom demand
"To secure the deletion the deletion of this data and prevent its public release, we require a payment of 125.000 US dollars in baguettes," the criminals write there. If the demand is not met, the compromised information will be published. The malicious actors also write that public disclosure of the data leak will reduce the ransom amount by 50 percent.
(Image:Â Screenshot / dmk)
On Hellcat's overview page on the darknet, the shorter entry mentions Thursday, November 7 as the threatened release date. However, the currency of the ransom demand there is XMR, i.e. it is to be paid in the cryptocurrency Monero.
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The company has apparently commented to US media: "Schneider Electric is investigating a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorized access to one of our internal project implementation tracking platforms operating in an isolated environment." The global incident response team was immediately mobilized to respond to the incident. "Schneider Electric products and services are not affected," the company added.
Schneider Electric has not yet responded to a request from heise online. We will update the report if we receive a statement.
Schneider Electric should now have experience in dealing with online blackmail groups. Around the beginning of the year, the cyber gang "Cactus" was able to penetrate the company's IT and steal terabytes of data. While the company had published information about this at the time, there is no reference to the incident on the Schneider Electric website at the time of reporting.
(dmk)
