ASCO Industries

History

2019: The virus racketeer stopped production of parts for airplanes at the plants in four countries

In the middle of June, 2019 ASCO, one of the world's largest suppliers of spare parts for the aircraft equipment, stopped production at the plants in four countries because of the virus racketeer which developed on the production site in Zaventem, Belgium.

Because of defeat of IT systems a virus the company sent home about 1000 from 1400 workers. Analysts of ASCO planned that a downtime will not exceed three days, Monday through Wednesday, but the Belgian mass media reported that the improvised holiday was prolonged for all week, including days off.

The Belgian space company ASCO Industries was forced to stop production because of a virus of the racketeer

According to messages, the virus racketeer got into a system on June 7, 2019 and originally affected the Belgian plant, however then ASCO was necessary to close also the plants in Germany, Canada and the USA. The non-productive offices located in France and Brazil did not suffer. So far it is not clear whether the company stopped work at other plants because of spread of a virus on all system or just as a precautionary measure.

The company announced an incident in law enforcement agencies. To the middle of June, 2019 investigation is conducted. About what malware there is a speech, it is not reported. Unlike aluminum producer of Norsk Hydro who underwent the similar attack at the beginning of 2019 and constantly informed on this incident, ASCO does not hurry to announce the measures taken in connection with the hacker attack. Despite the declaration that the attack of a virus led to losses for the amount about $40 million the stocks Norsk Hydro did not fall in price but only increased thanks to open and fair tactics of negotiating with shareholders concerning an incident.

While it is not clear whether agreed to pay ASCO the redemption for restoring access to the systems, recovers them from backup copies or buys the new systems and recovers a computer network from scratch as it was done by some companies in the past.^[1]

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