Boeing acknowledged the incident days after the Lockbit cybercrime gang said on Friday it had stolen"a tremendous amount" of sensitive data from the US planemaker that it would dump online if Boeing didn't pay ransom by Nov 2.
"This issue does not affect flight safety," a Boeing spokesperson said."We are actively investigating the incident and coordinating with law enforcement and regulatory authorities. We are notifying our customers and suppliers." The hacking group typically deploys ransomware on a victim organization's system to lock it up, as well as stealing sensitive data for extortion.
"Paying the ransom would simply elicit a pinky promise from LockBit that they will destroy whatever data they obtained," Callow said."There would, however, be no way of knowing for sure that they actually had."