Electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, known for producing devices and components for companies including Apple, Google, Nvidia, and Sony, confirmed on Monday a cyberattack that potentially impacted some of its factories.
Foxconn’s statement to media indicated that the cyberattack affected its North American facilities, adding that “the affected factories are currently resuming normal production.”
The ransomware group Nitrogen took responsibility for breaching Foxconn via a statement on its dark web leak site, where it attempts to extort victims by publicizing their data. If victims do not comply with ransom demands, the group typically releases the stolen data.
The hackers allege they stole over 11 million files containing sensitive information from Foxconn clients such as Apple, Dell, Google, Intel, Nvidia, and others. As evidence, they released images resembling product schematics, guidelines, and bank statements.
Nitrogen is characterized as a double-extortion ransomware group. This involves not only encrypting files to make them inaccessible but also stealing them first, thus enabling threats to leak the data, offering two ways to profit from their hacking activity.
Foxconn did not provide immediate responses to several specific questions regarding the attack.