A cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) that halted production for months and cost the British economy an estimated $2.5 billion has been attributed to a Russian hacking group, according to a report from The New York Times citing people close to the investigation.
The attack, which occurred last year, targeted one of the U.K.’s biggest employers and caused damage severe enough that the British government stepped in with a £1.5 billion (approximately $2 billion) bailout payment to the company.
While investigators have identified the hackers as Russian, it remains unclear whether they were acting on direct orders from the Russian government, operating independently as criminals, or working with the tacit approval of the Kremlin — a gray area that investigators have not yet resolved.
Microsoft, which had been tracking the Russian hacking group, alerted JLR to information about the hackers’ identities. The broader investigation involved multiple agencies and firms, including the FBI, Britain’s National Crime Agency, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, Google’s Mandiant unit, and Palo Alto Networks.
In an unusual development, investigators also discovered that the Russian group was not the sole intruder. A Jordanian hacker operating under the name Rey had separately breached some JLR networks, according to the Times — a rare but not unprecedented occurrence in cybersecurity investigations.
The JLR hack stands out as one of the most disruptive and costly cyberattacks in recent years, underscoring the potential economic consequences when critical industrial targets are compromised. The U.K. government’s decision to intervene financially reflects the scale of disruption the attack caused to both the company and the broader national economy.
Source: TechCrunch