ASCO, one of the largest airplane part suppliers, hit by ransomware

ASCO and its services suffered from a ransomware attack on June 7th

ASCO has been attacked by ransomware on the 7th of June which related to closing subsidiary factories worldwide

ASCO, one of the largest airplane part providers, was hit by a ransomware attack on the 7th of June this year. The worldwide organization has been supplying such companies as Boeing^[1] and Airbus. However, because of its infected systems, it was made to shut down most of its factories for one week, some of which are located in Belgium, Germany, the United States, and Canada.^[2]

The infection took place in Zaventem, Belgium, but some experts think that the authorities have already disabled subsidiary factories in other countries as a precautionary measure. According to other speculations, related factories have also been infected. However, having in mind that each part of the company functions independently, this possibility is very small.

The immediate shut down made the company to send 1000 employees home as only 500 of people were required for the work of the factory.^[3] Subsidiaries which are located in France and Brazil and are not related to airplane part production are still safe from the cyber attack.^[4]

Details about the ransomware still remain unknown

Talking about the ransomware name, it hasn't been revealed yet. Also, there is no information if the company paid the demanded ransom. Overall, not much information has been provided about this attempt and none from the authorities has released any comments by providing a clearer view about the incident.

However, ransomware infections are one of the scariest threats worldwide, attacking random people and even well-known companies. Once the cyber threat appears on the targeted computer system, it continues with file encryption and displays a ransom demand in a special ransom note. Money is urged to be transferred in cryptocurrency and the price can vary each time.

Mostly, the ransom price for regular users varies from $500 to approximately $2000 in BTC but it can be even bigger for worldwide institutions or companies. Locked files are very hard to decrypt on your own, so many people find paying the ransom the only way to get their data back.

ASCO is not the first huge victim that fell victim to ransomware this year

The growing ransomware tendency to attack serious businesses or even entire cities has been increasing lately. Just one week ago, security experts reported about the Lake City which was infected by the so-called Triple Threat ransomware. The attack took place on June 10th and paralyzed the entire city.^[5] Due to the dangerous infection, which is set to launch three different modules for action, lots of services were disabled, including payments, and the city was made to go back to papers and pencils.

Nowadays, the rate of such infections is increasing very fast as it is an easy way helping hackers generate millions of dollars. For example, the infamous GandCrab is known to have helped its developers earn a staggering 2.5 billion dollars.^[6]

There is no doubt that users need to take all required precautionary tips to avoid such malware. A basic but very helpful thing is keeping an eye on your safety while completing computing work. Avoiding peer-to-peer networks and other suspicious pages is a great security measure that should be taken to prevent different types of potential threats. Continuously, strong antivirus protection is crucial as not everything can be spotted by the human eye and these tools are the ones that are capable of detecting possibly-malicious sources automatically.