Austal, an Australia based global shipbuilding company has made it official that its Australian database management system was reigning under cyber attack launched by an unknown offender.
The Western Australian Defense Builder has even clarified that the email addresses and mobile phone numbers of some staff members and some of their valuable customers were accessed by offender/s during the incident.
News is out that the cyber crook or the group who was behind the attack has tried to sell the accessed info on the dark web and tried to join hands with some online extortionists.
Headquartered in Henderson, Austal is known to have three shipbuilding facilities in the region. The vessels used by the nation’s Department of Defense were designed and constructed in Henderson, Western Australia and in Alabama. The commercial vehicles are manufactured by the company in Balamban, Philippines.
Sources say that ship design drawings supplied to customers and some financial info of sub-contractors could have been accessed by the hackers via cyber attack. But they also say that the accessed info was not sensitive nor classified.
Although, the company is known to design, manufacture and supply vessels to other countries including the US, the senior management of Austal has confirmed that the breach was only limited to Australia.
Duncan Lewis, the head of Australian Security Intelligence Organization said that it was still unclear on who was behind the attack. However, he did not rule out the possibility that the attack could have been launched by the nation’s adversaries i.e China and Russia.
