Cyber Attack Shuts Down Hoya Corp's Thailand Plant for Three Days

Japanese optical products manufacturer HOYA Corporation was hit by a cyber attack at the end of February which led to a partial shutdown of its production lines from Thailand for three days.

The company disclosed that around 100 computers were infected with a malware strain designed to steal user credentials from the machines it compromises and to drop a cryptocurrency miner during the infection process' second stage.

As reported by multiple local sources (The Japan Times, Kyodo News, SankeiBiz), HOYA Corp. was able to block the attackers' cryptojacking attempt after the credential-stealing malware put an abnormal load on a network server which led to the quick discovery of the attack.

Following the initial phase of the attack, the workers were no longer able to effectively take care of orders with the overall industrial output level of the manufacturing plant dropping by roughly 60%.

The IT computing system of the Thailand plant was not the only victim given that the computers at the Japanese headquarters were also impacted, making it harder to issue invoices during the incident.

While the cyber attack had limited impact on HOYA's business and no data was leaked according to a company official, the production delay caused by the incident is still affecting the manufacturer seeing that its plants have no downtime.

Toyota and Norsk Hydro also under attack this year

HOYA Corp. is not the only company affected by cyber attacks lately, with multiple Toyota and Lexus sales subsidiaries being breached at the end of March, leading to the personal information of roughly 3.1 million Toyota customers possibly being leaked.

In addition, also during March, the Norsk Hydro aluminum company was forced to switch to partial manual operations after a cyber attack that pushed LockerGoga ransomware impacted its production plants.

In January, LockerGoga was also used to attack the network of engineering consulting firm Altran Technologies, which was subsequently forced to shut down its entire IT network to protect the company's data.