Wind turbine maker Vestas falls victim to ransomware attack

The world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas, was recently the victim of a ransomware cyberattack that saw personal data being made public. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on November 19th, Danish-based Vestas attempted to shut down a range of IT systems across the business to stop the incident from spreading further.

Despite being able to continue operating, Vestas has confirmed that hackers did retrieve data from a compromised internal file system and have made some of this data public. “Due to the potential risk caused by the leak of personal data, Vestas encourages all employees and business partners to continue to stay vigilant of any indications of misuse of their personal data,” Vestas said in a statement.

A wide array of personal information has been released, including data taken from CVs. But, in some cases, highly sensitive information such as social security numbers and bank account information were made public. In the most extreme cases, hackers released identification documents, including passports, birth certificates, work permits and driver’s licenses, making this breach a major concern for those who have been affected.

High profile ransomware attacks have made the headlines in recent years, most notably the case of US natural gas provider Colonial Pipeline, which faced a similar incident as Vestas, and controversially paid the DarkSide hacking group a $4.4 million ransom.

Vestas have made it clear that this incident has not impacted all employees and business partners, with the majority of data that was compromised not being sensitive. “If Vestas, as part of the investigation, identifies individuals whose personal data is compromised, Vestas will to the extent possible notify the affected individuals, if it is assessed that this is appropriate given the risk to such individuals,” says Vestas.