Schneider Electric Hit by HellCat Hackers, 40GB of Data Stolen
The international company Schneider Electric, specializing in energy management, has confirmed a breach of its systems. The hacker group HellCat demanded a ransom of $125,000, humorously referring to the sum as “baguettes.”
According to dark web forum information from November 2, the attackers stole over 40 GB of compressed data. The stolen materials include critically sensitive information about company projects, various developments, plugins, and more than 400,000 lines of user data. It is believed that the cybercriminals gained access to Schneider Electric’s Atlassian Jira system.
Over the weekend, another hacker using the alias ‘grep’ publicly announced on the social network X that, despite the company’s detection of the breach and subsequent service resets, the attackers retained access to the systems.
In a statement to Bleeping Computer, Schneider Electric representatives acknowledged the unauthorized intrusion into their internal project tracking platform, while assuring that all services and products remain fully operational.
The hackers issued a condition: if the company’s CEO publicly acknowledges the breach, the ransom amount will be halved. Otherwise, the attackers threaten to disseminate the stolen data.
In February of this year, the group Cactus targeted the company, claiming to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of confidential data. The criminals published 25 megabytes of the stolen information on their site as proof.
Schneider Electric is part of the Fortune Global 500, with an estimated market value of approximately $145 billion.
