Airbus has launched an investigation after a hacker leaked information allegedly stolen from the French aerospace giant’s systems.
Cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock reported on Tuesday that a hacker who uses the online moniker ‘USDoD’ claimed earlier this month on a cybercrime forum that they had hacked Airbus.
The same hacker previously claimed to have breached the FBI’s InfraGard database, which stores information on 80,000 people, including business leaders, IT professionals, and military, law enforcement, and government officials.
The hacker, who recently announced joining an emerging ransomware group, apparently obtained the personal information of 3,200 people associated with Airbus vendors, including Rockwell Collins and Thales. The compromised data includes names, job titles, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers.
The attacker said they had gained access to Airbus systems using a compromised account belonging to an employee at a Turkish airline. Airbus confirmed to Hudson Rock that this was indeed the attack vector.
The cybersecurity firm’s investigation showed that the hacker obtained the targeted airline employee’s credentials for Airbus systems with the aid of malware.
Information-stealing malware collects vast amounts of credentials from infected computers, and the malware operators then sell those credentials to others. In this case, Hudson Rock determined that the employee likely got their device infected with RedLine malware after downloading a pirated version of .NET.
“Credentials obtained from info-stealer infections, which have become the primary initial attack vector in recent years, provide threat actors with easy entry points into companies, facilitating data breaches and ransomware attacks,” Hudson Rock said.
The security firm regularly analyzes data obtained by such info-stealers, which have also been observed stealing hacker forum credentials.
In a statement provided to SecurityWeek, an Airbus spokesperson said, “Airbus has launched an investigation into a cyber event during which an IT account associated with an Airbus customer has been attacked. This account was used to download business documents dedicated to this customer from an Airbus web portal.”
“Immediate remedial and follow-up measures were taken by our security teams to prevent our systems from being compromised,” the spokesperson added.
Related: Black Hat Hacker Exposes Real Identity After Infecting Own Computer With Malware
Related: Airbus CyberSecurity Subsidiary Stormshield Discloses Data Breach
Related: Airbus Says Taking ‘Appropriate Measures’ Against Hackers
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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