Boeing is not experiencing any production issues after experiencing what it called a “limited intrusion of malware” Wednesday, despite a report that some within the company feared the worst.
The Seattle Times reported Wednesday that Boeing engineers were “all hands on deck” dealing with the WannaCry malware, which caused havoc around the world last year when it infected thousands of computers by taking advantage of a Windows flaw stolen from the National Security Agency. But the company issued a statement following that report that said initial worries that production systems for the Boeing 777 would be taken down by the malware were not realized:
A number of articles on a malware disruption are overstated and inaccurate. Our cybersecurity operations center detected a limited intrusion of malware that affected a small number of systems. Remediations were applied and this is not a production or delivery issue.
Based on that statement, it’s also not clear if the WannaCry malware variant is the one in play here. A similar bit of malware called NotPetya also caused an enormous amount of damage last year, including millions of dollars of ruined equipment at shipping giant Maersk.
Large companies are constantly under attack by malicious hackers, especially companies like Boeing with ties to the military and aerospace industry. Boeing’s statement does not address whether this attack was ransomware, in which hackers hold computers hostage until their owners pay up, or an attempt to steal information.
We’ve reached out to Boeing for more details, and will update this post if anything new develops.
