Boeing production plant hit with WannaCry ransomware attack, but says no impact on jet production

Boeing production plant in North Charleston,South Carolina facility was hit by WannaCry ransomware attack on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported. Aerospace  giant Boeing said it has “detected a limited intrusion of malware” that affected “a small number of systems,” a company vice president said on Wednesday.  The company later  downplayed the impact and called it a “limited intrusion” with production unaffected after fears within the company that airplane production could be affected.

According Seattle Times, chief engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplane production engineering,  Mike VanderWel, sent out an alarming memo calling for “All hands on deck” after the cyber attack. “It is metastasizing rapidly out of North Charleston and I just heard 777 (automated spar assembly tools) may have gone down,” VanderWel wrote, adding his concern that the virus could hit equipment used in functional tests of airplanes ready to roll out and potentially “spread to airplane software.”

“Our cybersecurity operations center detected a limited intrusion of malware that affected a small number of systems,” Boeing said. “Remediations were applied and this is not a production and delivery issue.”

Boeing says it detected a ‘limited intrusion’ of malware into some of its systems
U.S. planemaker Boeing “detected a limited intrusion of malware” that affected “a small number of systems,” a company vice president said on Wednesday.

A South Carolina facility owned by aerospace and defense contracting giant Boeing was hit by a WannaCry attack on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported, but the company is now trying to tamp down fears that the dreaded ransomware is back on the rise after it was only barely snuffed out last year.