Indian Nagpur’s Solar Industries, making military weapons, hit by cyber attack

The Indian Nagpur company which makes weapons for the Indian military has faced a cyberattack and now the company’s sensitive data is online for sale. While there is no official word from the firm, Solar Industries India Limited, the breach was confirmed by a researcher at Bengaluru-based cybersecurity firm CloudSEK which keeps an eye on cybersecurity incidents.

“This leaked information poses a threat to the confidentiality of the weaponry used by the Indian military which can be misused by motivated adversaries for gaining a strategic advantage against India,” the CloudSEK researcher mentioned in the statement.

Hacker group ‘ALPHV’ or BlackCat, that uses ransomware to hack, took responsibility for the attack. On its blog, the group claimed to have “breached the company infrastructure and to have stolen 2TB of data, including secret military data related to weapons production.”

The blog contained samples of documents taken from Solar Industries India Limited’s computers. “Based on the samples shared by the ransomware group, it seems like their claims of having access to internal documents are legitimate,”

The information hacked by the group reportedly includes personal information of employees, customer information; details of armament supply chains; blueprints and engineering documentation of the weapons; information about Solar Industries India partners; government documents revealing details of cooperation; records from all production cameras; details of warhead composition and engineering documentation; audits and reports of flaws and vulnerabilities in the company’s products, and contracts with customers. The hacker group also invited bids for the information within 24 hours of the publication of its blog.