German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall says cyber attack targeted its automotive business

Rheinmetall, one of Germany’s largest automotive and arms manufacturing companies, suffered a cyber attack that affected its industrial customers in the automotive sector.

Established in 1889 and headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, Rheinmetall manufactures automotive parts as well as military weapon systems such as tank guns, munitions, anti-tank guided missiles, autocannons, military vehicles, and electronics. The company generated a revenue of around 6.4 billion euros in 2022.

A Rheinmetall spokesperson said this week that the cyber attack was aimed at the company’s department dealing with non-military customers, mostly in the automotive sector. Rheinmetall also added that the cyber attack did not affect its military division.

“Rheinmetall is currently investigating the extent of the damages and is in close contact with the relevant authorities. The failure does not affect the military business - Automotive Systems, Weapons and Ammunition, and Electronic Solutions. The extent of the damage is currently being determined,” the spokesperson said.

This security incident occurred soon after the Russian hacktivist group Killnet uploaded a message on its Telegram channel, urging its followers to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack against Rheinmetall.

Confirming the claims of the cyber criminal group, the company said that it noticed a sudden spike of traffic in its network, but its IT infrastructure wasn’t affected by the DDoS attack.

Recently, Rheinmetall announced that it is planning to build a new tank factory in Ukraine. Killnet, the self-proclaimed Russian “hacktivist” group has been actively targeting any organisation that has criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this year, several websites of German airports, banks, and public administration bodies were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks carried out by Killnet. The group also targeted the European Parliament’s website with a DDoS attack that forced it to take its official website offline for almost two hours.

The attack on the European Parliament’s website took place not long after the chamber designated Russia as a terrorist state because of Moscow’s strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine.