Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Tuesday confirmed a cyberattack targeting some of its North American facilities, but said the affected factories were gradually returning to normal.
The company, known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), said that its cybersecurity team “activated the response mechanism and implemented operational measures to ensure the continuity of production and delivery.”
“The affected factories are resuming normal production,” the company said in a statement.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, AFP
Hon Hai had previously described it as a “technical issue,” when news of the cyberattack first surfaced.
The confirmation followed media reports of a large-scale information technology system incident that broke out at the company’s facility in Wisconsin, forcing a temporary shutdown of several production lines.
Media reports have identified the perpetrator as the Nitrogen ransomware group. The hackers claimed on the dark Web that they had breached Hon Hai’s network and taken 8 terabytes of data, including more than 11 million internal documents.
The leaked data might have included sensitive technical information linked to several major clients, including Apple Inc, Intel Corp, Alphabet Inc’s Google, Nvidia Corp and Dell Technologies Inc, reports said.
Nitrogen also posted a collection of what it said were sample files, meant to serve as proof of the attack.
While Hon Hai acknowledged the attack and temporary disruptions to some production lines, it did not provide details on the scope of the breach or the nature of the compromised data.
The company’s plant in Mount Pleasant serves as a base for high-end server production and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure development. As of late last year, the company had invested US$2 billion there and created 1,500 jobs, it said.
Wisconsin Economic Development Corp late last year approved a new four-year operational incentive plan, supporting Hon Hai’s continued expansion into AI and data security infrastructure in the region.
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