Frankfurt: Technical trade secrets were stolen from the steel production and manufacturing plant design divisions of ThyssenKrupp AG in cyber attacks earlier this year, the German company said on Thursday. ThyssenKrupp, one of the world’s largest steel makers, said it had been targeted by attackers located in southeast Asia engaged in what it said were “organised, highly professional hacker activities”.
In breaches discovered by the company’s internal security team in April and traced back to February, hackers stole project data from ThyssenKrupp’s plant engineering division and from other areas yet to be determined. “ThyssenKrupp has become the target of a massive cyber attack,” the industrial conglomerate said in a statement.
Globally, cyber attacks on banks, retailers and other businesses have led to widespread consumer and financial data losses in recent years. ThyssenKrupp’s disclosure followed last week’s attack on Deutsche Telekom routers that caused outage for nearly 1 million customers. While revelations of industrial espionage are far rarer, estimates put the costs to businesses in the billions of dollars. China was frequently blamed for such commercial hacking attacks until the US and China agreed not to hack each other’s businesses.
