Danish wind turbine giant Vestas Wind Systems on Monday confirmed that the recently disclosed cyberattack involved ransomware.
Vestas became aware of the breach on November 19 and it immediately started shutting down IT systems. Little information was provided when the attack was disclosed, but the company’s description of the incident suggested that it was a ransomware attack.
In an update shared on Monday, Vestas confirmed that ransomware was indeed used and that the incident resulted in data getting compromised.
“The extent to which data has been compromised is still being investigated, but for now it appears that the data foremost relates to Vestas’ internal matters,” the company said.
Vestas said nearly all systems had been restored, and that wind turbine operations were not impacted, which suggests the attackers did not make it through to OT systems.
“Although Vestas is close to normal operations, the work and investigations are still ongoing. In that regard, Vestas maintains there is no indication that the event has impacted customer and supply chain operations, which is supported by the forensics investigation carried out with the assistance of third-party experts,” the company said.
Vestas has not shared any additional information on the attack, nor the type of ransomware it has been targeted with.
SecurityWeek has checked the leak websites of several ransomware groups and Vestas does not appear to be listed on any of them.
Ransomware operators publish the name of a targeted company on their website in an effort to convince the victim to pay a ransom. If the victim has made it clear that they don’t intend to pay up, the attackers start leaking the stolen information, which in some cases can be tens of gigabytes of files. Victims are not named on these leak websites if they do pay up or while they are negotiating with the attackers.
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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.
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