A $50M Ransom is Required in Exchange for Continental Stolen Data 

On Tuesday, a German tire manufacturing company, Continental, reported that it lost some data during a cyber-attack. Although the firm reported the incident early, it withheld some information.

One such is that the hacker carted vital files from the servers. Recall that the hack happened in August and the tire makers claim that the investigation is still ongoing.

Stolen Continental Files go Public

One report has it that the threat actors published the firm’s business plans, budgets, investments, strategies, workflow, and customers’ personal data.

The question on everyone’s mind at the time was “who is responsible?” The notorious hacking group LockBit claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had about 40 terabytes of stolen data. The incident caused huge losses to the company.

Nonetheless, they reduced sensitive data exposure by implementing technical security measures.

Handelsblatt states the hackers threaten to sell  Continental data if a ransom of $50 million is not paid within a stipulated period of time.  Although the hackers have exploited the data in exchange for money, the German tire company continues to practice security solutions in their daily activities

Recently, the hacker group LockBit was reportedly involved with a French Defense Company called Thales group. LockBit hacked the system and database infrastructure of the Thales group. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office has ranked LockBit as the top active ransomware group.

Solutions Provided

The European Union makes strategic solutions to prohibit victims from paying ransom to hackers whenever their data is compromised. Hopefully, this regulation can reduce ransomware in the country.

Security advisory bodies urge companies to secure data at all times to avoid any leaks of information to threat actors. The stakeholders also reiterated that the implementation of standards, laws, and regulations will help handle the availability of data.

This is not the first case of ransomware. The incident is on the rise and is more effective.