Johnson Controls falls victim to ransomware attack

Johnson Controls, a multinational company that develops and manufactures industrial control systems, security equipment, air conditioners and fire safety equipment, suffered a ransomware cyber attack at the end of September. The attackers started with systems in the company's Asian offices and even reached VMware ESXi servers. The security breach forced the company to shut down its systems to prevent the threat from spreading.

These IT system outages affected subsidiary companies as well as led to disruptions in business operations, including York, Simplex and Ruskin, which began displaying technical outage messages on website login pages and customer portals.

Threat intelligence group VX-Underground reports that the threat group known as Dark Angels is the alleged perpetrator of this unauthorised access. The cyber attackers claim to have made off with 27 TB of data from the group's systems.