It was Russian hackers who caused a major system failure at the Aluminerie Alouette in Sept-Îles two weeks ago, according to experts.
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It was Russian hackers who caused a major system failure at the Aluminerie Alouette in Sept-Îles two weeks ago, according to experts.
“We have access to the documents they have published”, indicated to the Journal the CEO of StreamScan, Karim Ganame, who was able to confirm the information first revealed by ICI Radio-Canada Côte-Nord.
According to him, the modus operandi is simple. Cybercriminals take possession of a network and then attempt to negotiate with the company.
“It’s ransomware. They expect you to negotiate. If you don’t negotiate, they start publishing your data to put pressure on you,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Conti is a very aggressive group of Russian pirates,” added Karim Ganame.
“That’s what they do for a living, ransomware. It has nothing to do with the war. They go everywhere. For them, an aluminum smelter is more interesting than a bakery,” analyzes Éric Parent, CEO of Eva Technologies.
Courtesy picture
We can see the name of Aluminerie Alouette on certain documents consulted by the CEO of StreamScan, Karim Ganame.
“Internal sabotage”
However, for Julien Valois-Francoeur, a lawyer in high technology and telecommunications, the recent actions of these pirates are perhaps not as distant as one thinks from the war in Ukraine. “When the conflict broke out, some members of Conti remained neutral, others took the side of the Russian government, so one of their members turned his shirt around and started publishing info once morest them “, he underlined.
Tricky internal hacking group discussions have been exposed by a member once morest the war, the magazine has revealed TechCrunch.
“There would even be doubts that some of these groups are linked to the Russian secret services”, went so far as to say Julien Valois-Francoeur.
Today, the Aluminerie Alouette did not respond to our interview requests.