Continental Auto Group Hit in Attack

German multinational automotive group Continental suffered a cyberattack back in August and while the company said it successfully avert the assault, a ransomware group is now threatening to divulge information it said it stole during the hack.
In an August 24 statement, Continental said “in a cyberattack, attackers infiltrated parts of Continental’s IT systems. The company detected the attack in early August and then averted it. Continental’s business activities have not been affected at any point.

UPDATE: German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported in early November that the hackers had stolen around 40 terabytes of data from the company. The FBI is also involved in the investigation. Continental did not provide any information on the possible economic consequences in the statement. The reason for the lengthy internal investigations is partly due to the extent of the data leak. The company must analyze more than 55 million file entries from the list in the darknet.

The theft was said to include sensitive data from customers such as Volkswagen Group, information on supervisory board meetings and correspondence from chief controller Wolfgang Reitzle.

Estimated Cost

40TB stolen, $40 Million ransomware demanded

Threat Source

Impacts

IT