Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cyber Insurance

Ransomware Attack Costs Norsk Hydro Tens of Millions of Dollars

Norwegian aluminum giant Norsk Hydro lost $35-41 million in the first quarter of 2019 as a result of the ransomware attack and expects additional losses of $23-29 million in the second quarter.

Norwegian aluminum giant Norsk Hydro lost $35-41 million in the first quarter of 2019 as a result of the ransomware attack and expects additional losses of $23-29 million in the second quarter.

A piece of file-encrypting ransomware named LockerGoga started infecting Norsk Hydro systems on March 18. The attack caused disruptions at several of the company’s plants, forcing workers to rely on manual processes.

Hydro has been highly transparent regarding the impact of the incident. It claimed to have good backups in place and it did not intend on paying the ransom. However, the security breach still cost the firm a significant amount of money.

Roughly two weeks after the incident was made public, Hydro estimated that it lost $35-41 million (300-350 million Norwegian crowns) in the first week following the attack. Roughly one month later it made another estimate, putting the cost of the attack at roughly $50 million.

The company on Tuesday published its financial report for the first quarter, which it was forced to delay by over one month due to the cyberattack. The report shows that its Extruded Solutions unit suffered the biggest operational and financial impact.

Hydro says the overall impact of the cyberattack in the first quarter remains $35-41 million. It estimates that losses will total $23-29 million (200-250 million Norwegian crowns) in the second quarter.

“Operations and sales have recovered successively during the quarter, reducing the incremental financial impact accordingly,” the company said. “Hydro has a robust cyber insurance in place with recognized insurers. Hydro has not yet recognized any insurance compensation. This will be recorded when deemed virtually certain.”

The earnings report shows that the company’s core profit fell 82% in the first quarter, but it was still better than some experts expected and the value of Hydro shares went up following the news.

Related: Industry Reactions to Norsk Hydro Breach

Related: Iranian Hackers Caused Losses in Hundreds of Millions

Related: NotPetya Attack Costs Big Companies Millions

Related: Cyber Insurance Market to Double by 2020, Says Munich Re

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing 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.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

Data Breaches

LastPass DevOp engineer's home computer hacked and implanted with keylogging malware as part of a sustained cyberattack that exfiltrated corporate data from the cloud...

Application Security

GitHub this week announced the revocation of three certificates used for the GitHub Desktop and Atom applications.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Data Breaches

GoTo said an unidentified threat actor stole encrypted backups and an encryption key for a portion of that data during a 2022 breach.

Funding/M&A

Twenty-one cybersecurity-related M&A deals were announced in December 2022.

Management & Strategy

Industry professionals comment on the recent disruption of the Hive ransomware operation and its hacking by law enforcement.