Ransomware WannaCry is back, the latest victim is Boeing

Boeing has fallen prey to WannaCry virus that may impact the production of the aircraft manufacturing company. The infection was brought to light in a memo sent by the Chief Engineer of the production engineering department at the Boeing Commercial Airplane.

The memo indicated that the threats were spreading at the North Charleston location of the company and the virus might have taken down the automated assembly line of spar tools. The Chief Engineer also mentioned his concerned about the equipment being used for functionality tests of aircraft and if the virus effects it, it can potentially spread to airplane software as well.

The cybersecurity operations center of the company detected a limited intrusion of malware that affected only a small number of systems. This, however, was not a production line or delivery issue. A Boeing Spokesperson has also indicated that the attack is not as severe as it seems and remediations have already been applied.

In May, last year, a hundred countries were hit by the attack on major banks, hospitals, and government offices falling prey to the hackers. The virus was received through an email, which once opened, encrypted and locked all data on the computer. Data could only be decrypted if the ransom amount was paid to the hackers in bitcoins. Last June, the virus also hit the production line of Honda.