Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the largest defence supplier of jet and nuclear power plant information has now backtracked on previous statements and revealed that there is a possibility that that some data may have been stolen. A company spokesman revealed that there is a “Possibility of some data leakage.”
The initial breach occurred in August when hackers infiltrated the company’s network and planted malware. When the company publicised information about the attack and confirmed that a number of its servers and PCs had been infected but stated that no data had been compromised. A U.S. based Mitsubishi Heavy spokesman admitted that the hackers had uncovered company Internet Protocol (IP) addresses but claimed that no data was compromised as the attack “was caught at an early stage.”
It is now apparent that they didn’t catch the attack early enough as the company has had to backtrack on previous statements and reveal that after further investigations, there is the possibility that sensitive data may have been compromised.
Mitsubishi Heavy in a statement revealed “The company recently confirmed unintended transferring of some information on the company’s products and technologies between servers within the company. Based on the finding, the company investigated the incident further and recognized the possibility of some data leakage from the server in question.”
The company refused to expand on this statement and comment on whether data related to defence or nuclear technologies had been diverted.
This revelation was conveniently timed to coincide with the publishing of an article in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The article quoted unnamed sources who said that data on company built fighter jets, helicopters and nuclear power plants had in fact been stolen during the attack contrary to previous statements made by the company.
Mitsubishi Heavy stated that among the 83 compromised servers and PCs were ones at its Kobe shipyards, where the company builds diesel-electric submarines and components for nuclear power plants and its Nagoya plant which design and manufactures missile guidance systems. It was also confirmed that the firm’s corporate headquarters was also targeted.
Asahi Shimbun stated that the company is still investigating the attack with the cooperation of the Japanese authorities.
This attack was the first against a major Japanese defence contractor who were ranked as the world’s 26th largest defence contractor by Defense News last year.
