Russian hackers were behind $2.5 billion hack of Jaguar Land Rover: report
Key takeaways
- Last year, hackers attacked car giant Jaguar Land Rover, one of the U.K.’s biggest employers.
- For months, there was only speculation about who did it.
- Microsoft was tracking the Russian hacking group and alerted JLR to the information about the hacker s identities, the Times reports.
Last year, hackers attacked car giant Jaguar Land Rover, one of the U.K.’s biggest employers. The hack halted production for months and made a dent in the country’s economy. The damage was so severe that the U.K. government decided to bail out the company with a £1.5 billion (around $2 billion) payment, and estimates say the hack cost the British economy $2.5 billion.
For months, there was only speculation about who did it. Now, citing people close to the investigation, The New York Times reports that the hackers behind the breach were Russian, although it’s still unclear if they were working directly for Vladimir Putin’s government, were just criminals, or something in between, like criminals operating with the government’s tacit approval.
Microsoft was tracking the Russian hacking group and alerted JLR to the information about the hacker s identities, the Times reports. However sources also said that the FBI, Britain’s National Crime Agency and National Cyber Security Centre, Google’s Mandiant unit, and Palo Alto Networks all worked on the investigation.