Apple supplier Foxconn confirms ransomware attack affected North American factories

CABLING reports that Foxconn acknowledged that some of its North American factories “suffered a cyberattack” in recent days, after the Nitrogen ransomware group claimed to have stolen 8TB of company data. Here are the details.

Foxconn successfully attacked once again

According CABLINGA ransomware group known as Nitrogen claims to have stolen 8TB of data from Foxconn, a major manufacturing partner for iPhones and other Apple devices.

CABLING says:

A ransomware group is attempting to extort electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn, claiming it stole 8TB of company data, including schematics and project details from customers such as Dell, Google, Apple and Nvidia.

This is not the first ransomware incident involving Foxconn in recent years. In 2020, for example, a Foxconn facility in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, was hit by an attack which encrypted servers, stole data, and included a demand for bitcoins worth approximately $34.6 million at the time.

While CABLINGThe report does not mention it directly, it appears that this time the affected plants include its Mount Pleasant (WI) factory, according to The cybersecurity guru (through AppleInsider):

The outage first emerged on Friday, May 1, when workers at the Mount Pleasant campus reported a complete network collapse. At 7:00 am, the Wi-Fi was gone. By 11:00 am, the outage had spread to the plant’s core infrastructure.

“We were told to turn off our computers and not to log back in under any circumstances,” said one worker, who asked not to be identified. “Time card terminals were dead. We were filling out paper timesheets just to keep track of our hours.”

AppleInsider says In addition to the Wisconsin plant, it appears that a Foxconn facility in Houston, Texas, was also affected.

The site also says that while Nitrogen has published a set of sample files supposedly taken from Foxconn, Apple-related materials do not appear to be present in them:

It’s unclear if there are any files directly related to existing or future Apple projects. Ultimately, this isn’t a huge surprise, given that Foxconn’s Mount Pleasant facility primarily produces TVs and data servers rather than Apple devices.

This attack is the latest in a series of cyberattacks and extortion attempts involving Foxconn facilities in recent years. here it is CABLING again:

The idea of ​​Foxconn as a main objective is not just conceptual. The company has faced a series of extortion attempts, including a December 2020 attack on a Mexican facility in which the DoppelPaymer ransomware group memorably demanded 1,804 Bitcoin (worth approximately $34 million at the time). The LockBit group attacked another Foxconn facility in Mexico in May 2022 and disrupted production. More recently, LockBit attacked a subsidiary called Foxsemicon Integrated Technology in 2024 with defacements and data breach claims.

Foxconn, for its part, has not confirmed the extent of the incident, but said CABLING that the affected factories “are currently resuming normal production.”

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