French company Naval Group, which specializes in the development and production of warships, has launched an investigation after a 1 terabyte of data allegedly belonging to the company was published on the hacker forum DarkForums, BleepingComputer reports.
The incident is classified by the company as an attempt at destabilization and a reputational attack. Naval Group has filed a complaint with the relevant authorities and has engaged external experts for technical analysis.
According to the manufacturer, there are currently no signs of a breach of internal IT systems, and operations have not been impacted. All company resources are being deployed to establish the authenticity, source, and origin of the leak.
It all started on July 23, when a hacker going by the nickname Neferpitou posted a 13GB set of files on DarkForums that supposedly belonged to Naval Group. It contained internal communications, technical documentation, data from virtual machines, and possibly confidential warship control systems. The hacker demanded that Naval Group contact him within 72 hours to negotiate a ransom, but after some time he posted the entire data package.
Report from an attacker who allegedly stole Naval Group data
BleepingComputer
Analysts suggest that the leak may be related to a 2022 incident that affected French defense company Thales, which partly owns Naval Group.
Then, a group of hackers called LockBit claimed to have stolen Thales data and demanded a ransom for it. LockBit eventually posted an archive of the company's data, ~9.5 GB in size, on its website, but Thales said that there was no intrusion into its IT system and that the data leak had no impact on the company's business.