Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer, considered the third largest aircraft manufacturer after Boeing and Airbus, was hit by a ransomware attack last month. The hackers behind the attack leaked some of the company’s private files in retaliation for the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer’s refusal to negotiate with the attackers for a ransom payment. Instead, the victim of the ransomware attack chose to restore its affected systems from backups. The Embraer files were shared on a data leak site on the darknet, run by the RansomExx ransomware gang, also known as Defray777.
Among the data leaked to the underground data leak site are information about company employees, business contracts, flight simulation photos, and source code.
The data leak confirms that hackers managed to steal data from the servers . Embraer issued a statement last week confirming that it had suffered breach . However, the Brazilian planemaker did not confirm that the incident did not involve ransomware and data theft.
As reported by ZDNet, the company stated that the hackers gained access to a single environment and that the incident only temporarily affected some of its operations and businesses.
Currently, Embraer has not provided any additional comment regarding the attack, after the data leak news was released over the weekend on the darknet. Additionally, the RansomExx ransomware gang is among the numerous ransomware groups that manage and operate data leak sites.
Ransomware gangs use data leak sites to blackmail their victims into paying the ransom .During negotiations with the hackers, if the victims refuse to pay the ransom or do not even show up to negotiate, the attackers leak the stolen data online as revenge. In this way, the stolen data of the victim companies is accessible to competitors. Finally, it is worth noting that companies that fall victim to such attacks face regulatory sanctions in their countries.
