Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the largest defense contractor in Japan, has just acknowledged that a plethora of its servers and PCs have been infected with malware. However, the company did deny that any confidential information that may have been stored in these systems was, in fact, stolen.
The attack was first reported by media outlet The Daily Yomiuri. The story, which noted multiple confidential sources, stated that as many as eight individual types of malware had been discovered, including Trojan horses. A spokesman for Mitsubishi, based in the United States, confirmed that the company had indeed uncovered a large-scale intrusion that had succeeded in planting malware on 45 servers as well as an additional 38 individual PCs.
Servers located at the Mitsubishi shipyards in Kobe, the company’s shipyards in Nagasaki and its plant in Nagoya were among the list of compromised servers, stated the spokesman. In addition to that, the company’s corporate headquarters in Yokohama was also affected by the infection.
According to the spokesman, “This is certainly the first incident at Mitsubishi of this magnitude.” According to a statement released by Mitsubishi today, the infection was discovered in the middle of August and has since been under investigation.
“Mitsubishi IP addresses had been disclosed, but the attack was caught at an early stage,” the spokesman added. In addition to that, the spokesman added that the investigation has yet to turn up any evidence that any data had been pilfered from the affected servers.
This is only the most recent in a rash of attacks against multiple defense contractors from all across the globe including Lockheed Martin from the United States. Enterprise systems are typically infected after hackers target individuals by sending them business files infected with the malware. This includes things like infected Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Word documents.
As of right now, Mitsubishi has yet to zero in on the exact source of the malware though many experts are arguing that Chinese hackers, possibly supported by the Communist government, could be responsible.
Source: Computer World – Hackers hit Japan’s biggest defense contractor
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