German wind turbine maker shut down after cyberattack

A German wind turbine maker was forced to shut down its IT systems across multiple locations and business units after it was hit with a cyberattack on March 31. 

Nordex designs, sells and manufactures wind turbines, reporting nearly $6 billion in sales in 2021. The company has factories in Germany, China, Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Spain and India.

Last Thursday, the company said it detected an intrusion “in an early stage” and managed to initiate response measures quickly. 

“The incident response team of internal and external security experts has been set up immediately in order to contain the issue and prevent further propagation and to assess the extent of potential exposure,” the company said in a statement. 

“Customers, employees, and other stakeholders may be affected by the shutdown of several IT systems. The Nordex Group will provide further updates when more information is available.”

Nordex did not respond to requests for comment about the state of its operations on Monday. 

The incident was first reported by Reuters, and German news outlet Erneuerbare Energien said on Friday that calls to the company’s office returned busy signals. The news outlet also reported that the Nordex website initially said “Due to maintenance work, we are currently unavailable. Please try again later.” The website is currently back up and running. 

The attack on Nordex follows an incident last month where a cyberattack on satellite communications company Viasat caused the malfunction of 5,800 Enercon wind turbines in Germany. 

According to Renewables Now, the company has managed to restore the remote monitoring and maintenance tools for about 85% of machines that were initially affected by the attack.

Wind turbine maker Vestas was hit with a ransomware attack in November, and the group behind the attack eventually threatened to leak the data it stole. Like Nordex, the company had to shut down its IT systems across multiple business units and locations to stop the issue from spreading.