Ferrari Faces Ransomware Attack Exposing Customer Data

Italian luxury sportscar manufacturer Ferrari has informed customers that it was the victim of a ransomware attack that exposed the personal information of customers.

“We regret to inform you of a cyber incident at Ferrari, where a threat actor was able to access a limited number of systems in our IT environment. As part of this incident, certain data relating to our clients was exposed including names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers,” Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna said in a letter to affected customers.

“Your data may have been included as part of this incident. However, based on our investigation, no payment details and/or bank account numbers and/or other sensitive payment information, nor details of Ferrari cars owned or ordered have been stolen.”

Vigna went on to say that production systems were not impacted, and that the company "will not be held to ransom as paying such demands continues to fund criminal activity and enables threat actors to perpetuate their attacks.”

According to reports, it is uncertain if the attack is related to reports of an October 2022 incident where the RansomEXX had claimed to have successfully attacked the carmaker, which Ferrari never confirmed.

“A listing on the RansomEXX website, seen by TechCrunch, lists seven gigabytes of data allegedly stolen from Ferrari, including internal documents, data sheets and repair manuals,” TechCrunch reported.

Takeaway:

“The ransomware attack against Ferrari - which appears to include the exfiltration of sensitive data that exposed client 'names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers' and potentially other information - highlights the fact that this is not just a ransomware problem, it is a major data loss issue too. Even if Ferrari did everything right with regard to securing the data, and even if they do everything right with regard to the incident response measure, the fact is ransomware gangs are intent on stealing data to force victims into paying the ransom demand, and often this means that there is collateral damage to the entities whose sensitive data is exposed," Jon Miller, CEO & Co-founder of Halcyon, told CyberWire.

"Remember, the focus for ransomware operators is to cause as much pain as possible for victim orgs in order to extract the highest payment possible - this means even if the victim org pays the ransom, the attackers still have the data and can sell or expose it, or come back to the victim org and ask for even more money. Not paying ransom demands does not end the financial incentive for these attacks - defeating the attack before they can exfiltrate data and before they can disrupt operations is the only way to make these attacks unprofitable,” Miller told the CyberNews.

Halcyon.ai is the industry’s first dedicated, adaptive security platform that combines multiple advanced proprietary prevention engines along with AI models focused specifically on stopping ransomware – talk to a Halcyon expert today to find out more.