Boeing Production Facilities Infected as WannaCry Ransomware Strikes Aircraft Plant
Do you remember the notorious WannaCry ransomware virus that crippled systems across more than 70 countries? Recent reports reveal that this malicious software has not stopped its onslaught. In fact, its latest high-profile victim was a major Boeing aircraft manufacturing and testing facility located in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.
The incident reportedly took place on Wednesday, March 28, 2018. WannaCry, which first emerged in a massive global cyberattack in May 2017, triggered worldwide panic due to its ability to infect a single computer and rapidly propagate across all Windows machines sharing the same network.
As quoted by the Seattle Times, Mike VanderWel, Chief Engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, issued an urgent warning to employees to brace for the cyberattack. “It is metastasizing rapidly out of North Charleston and I just heard 777 (assembly automation equipment) may have gone down,” VanderWel wrote in a memo obtained by the publication.
Speaking on Wednesday evening, Linda Mills, the Head of Communications for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, clarified that the speculation in VanderWel’s message regarding the failure of 777 production tools was ultimately incorrect. “Our cybersecurity operations center detected a limited malware deployment that affected a small number of systems,” she stated. She further emphasized that the attack was strictly confined to computers within the Commercial Airplanes division, leaving the military and service units completely unaffected.
Although Microsoft had previously released security patches to fix the specific vulnerability exploited by this malware, the ransomware still managed to compromise systems at the Boeing plant, likely due to unpatched infrastructure. Microsoft declined to comment on the cyberattack involving Boeing.
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