Hackers attack France's Naval Group, the maker of India's Scorpene-class submarines

Hackers have claimed to have attacked French defence giant Naval Group, the maker of India’s Scorpene-class submarines.

The hackers have claimed to have accessed up to 1 terabyte of Naval Group’s data, including the source code for submarine weapon systems. The company said that it had not detected any intrusion in its systems and was verifying the authenticity of the hacker’s claim.

In a statement, the Naval Group said that it had launched an investigation into the matter and was working with the French government.

“All teams and resources are currently mobilised to analyse and verify the authenticity, origin and ownership of the data as quickly as possible. At this stage, no intrusion into our IT environments has been detected and there has been no impact on our activities,” the company said in a statement.

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The Naval Group is a four-centuries-old French shipbuilder that has made ships and submarines for France and international partners like India. While the company has made aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines for France, India’s six Kaveri-class submarines were built in partnership with Naval Group and were based on its Scorpene-class submarines.

In 2016, the Naval Group was subject of a hack in which cyberattackers accessed around 22,000 pages related to the company’s Scorpene-class submarines. The stolen documents contained “the entire secret combat capability of the six Scorpene-class submarines that French shipbuilder DCNS has designed for the Indian Navy”, according to The Australian that broke the news of the hack.

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Other than India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Chile are among the countries that have bought Scorpene-class submarines.

Hackers claim access to submarines’ source code

The Naval Group has said that it was the subject of a “reputational attack” by hackers in a “context marked by international, business and informational tensions”.

The company said that no ransom demand had been made.

The hackers published around 30 gigabytes of information on the internet that they claimed belonged to the combat management system of the Naval Group’s submarines and frigates and said they have 1 TB of data, according to Financial Times.

The hackers had initially given the Naval Group 72 hours to respond.

Separately, The Telegraph reported that the contents published by hackers include the purported source code for submarine weapon systems of the Naval Group.

With the source code, bad actors may gain insider knowledge of how the system works, such as the working of its access controls, authentication methods, and algorithms. They may also figure out vulnerability or find ways to insert vulnerabilities through future attacks.