Australian shipbuilder Austal affected by ransomware

On November 1, 2018, the enterprise Austal, an Australian shipbuilding company of defense and commercial ships, reported that it had refused to pay the required ransom of 1 bitcoin after being the victim of a security breach in its data management systems by an attacker.

On October 31, 2018, Xylitol a French safety researcher, published screenshots of the ads in a clandestine forum of the alleged attacker, nicknamed the.joker. Among the material on sale were the design drawings of the ships that are distributed to customers, manufacturing subcontractors and suppliers, as well as e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers of staff, all stored in a 75GB compressed archive.

Austal reported that the material on display is neither sensitive or classified, that it has had no impact on ongoing operations, and that it has taken steps to protect its data systems.