Canadian tool manufacturer hit by cyber attack

Share post:

A Canadian-based international manufacturer of die cast tools and car parts has been the victim of a cyber attack.

Exco Technologies said Monday that three production facilities within its Large Mould Group are recovering from a cyber incident last week.

The Toronto-headquartered company temporarily disabled some computer systems as it investigated this incident. It is in the middle of bringing these systems back online, and expects operations to be substantially restored over the next two weeks.

Shipments to customers have not and are not expected to be materially interrupted.

The statement didn’t detail the kind of attack, or whether personal or corporate data was accessed. It said independent experts have been retained to help the company in dealing with the matter.

Exco has two business segments:

— a casting and extrusion division with three business units that design, develop and manufacture tooling and related products for the aluminum die-cast and extrusion industries. It says the group is the world’s largest independent provider of tooling for these markets, operating a total of 16 tooling plants in nine countries;

— an automotive solutions group with four distinct businesses that design, develop and manufacture automotive interior trim components and assemblies for the North American and European markets. This group has operations in Canada, Mexico, and Morocco.

According to its latest financial report, the company had a profit of just under $19 million on sales of $498.9 million for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022.

“Although fuller details are yet to be disclosed about the attack on three of Exco Corp’s production facilities, current indicators point to this not being ransomware related,” said Dave Masson, director of enterprise security for Darktrace Canada. “Unfortunately, in situations like this, companies sometimes need to disable or shut down their OT systems (manufacturing/production systems) as a precaution, causing delays in their overall business process (similar to what we saw with Colonial Pipeline) which can be more disruptive than the initial attack itself.”

The post Canadian tool manufacturer hit by cyber attack first appeared on IT World Canada.

Howard Solomon
Howard Solomonhttps://www.itworldcanada.com
Currently a freelance writer, I'm the former editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada. An IT journalist since 1997, I've written for several of ITWC's sister publications including ITBusiness.ca and Computer Dealer News. Before that I was a staff reporter at the Calgary Herald and the Brampton (Ont.) Daily Times.

Featured Tech Jobs

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Related articles

Cyber Security Today, March 27, 2024 – A botnet exploits old routers, a new malware loader discovered, and more warnings about downloading code from...

This episode reports on a new network of 40,000 infected small and home office routers and other devices that are part of a criminal botnet

Cyber Security Today, March 25, 2024 – A suspected China threat actor going after unpatched F5 and ScreenConnet installations

This episode reports on a new campaign stealing email passwords ,the latest data breaches

A hacker’s view of the civic infrastructure: Hashtag Trending, the Weekend Edition for March 23rd, 2024

What does the civic infrastructure look like through the eyes of a hacker? The legendary general Sun Tzu in the Art of War said that in order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand your enemy. How do you do this? He said, “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” If we

Cyber Security Today, Week in Review for week ending Friday, March 22, 2024

This episode features discussion on lessons learned from the ransomware attack on the British Library, advice for managing expectations of IT/security teams, why firms are leaving Google Firebase unprotecte

Become a member

New, Relevant Tech Stories. Our article selection is done by industry professionals. Our writers summarize them to give you the key takeaways