- Ransomware group claims theft of large data archive from AkzoNobel
- Leaked files include sensitive personal and corporate documents
- The company confirms the incident but emphasizes limited impact
Cybercriminals recently claimed to have broken into AkzoNobel and stolen 170GB of data, including user emails, phone numbers, passport scans and other sensitive data.
Based in the Netherlands, AkzoNobel is a multinational company that is one of the largest paint and coating manufacturers in the world, whose products are used in homes, buildings, cars, industrial equipment and elsewhere.
The attack was claimed by a ransomware operator named Anubis, which says it took close to 170,000 files and leaked samples on its dark web page, which included screenshots of selected documents and a file tree.
Limited effect
The published data allegedly includes confidential agreements with high-profile clients, email addresses and phone numbers, email conversations, passport scans, material testing documents and internal technical specifications.
Following the leak, the company confirmed the news and provided more context about the breach:
“AkzoNobel has identified a security incident at one of our sites in the United States. The incident was limited to the respective site and was already contained,” the company said Bleeping Computer. “The impact is limited and we are taking the necessary steps to notify and support affected parties and will work closely with relevant authorities.”
It was also said that Anubis only leaked part of the stolen archives, which could mean that it reached some kind of deal with AkzoNobel. The company did not say whether it spoke to the attackers or not.
Anubis is a relatively new Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) operation that came into the spotlight last summer when it added a new feature to its encryption that irreversibly destroys all encrypted files on the compromised system.
When the threat actors activate the feature, the wiper deletes the contents of the files and reduces their size to 0 KB. The file names and structure remain intact, which means that it is impossible to recover the files.
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