By Munsif Vengattil, Aditya Kalra and Aditi Shah
NEW DELHI, June 22 (Reuters) – Tata Electronics said on Monday it had detected a recent “cybersecurity incident”, after researchers said World Leaks posted purported component design and specification papers of Apple and Tesla, both customers of the Indian group.
The ransomware group has posted more than 200,000 files on the dark web, the security researchers told Reuters.
“A few weeks ago, Tata Electronics identified a cybersecurity incident on some of our systems. Our response protocols were deployed immediately, and the incident has had no impact on our operations across businesses, which remain unaffected,” Tata Electronics told Reuters in a statement.
Apple was investigating the breach and a “full analysis was going on”, a source familiar with the matter said, adding that Tata had received a ransom demand related to the incident.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Tata Electronics declined to comment on the ransom demand.
The breach is the latest setback for Apple’s supply chain in India, where Tata faces scrutiny over alleged contamination of farmlands near one of its iPhone parts plants, Reuters reported.
Tata is emerging as one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners outside China, an expansion that is a cornerstone of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to make India an electronics manufacturing powerhouse.
Tata was hit by a cyberattack on its British Jaguar Land Rover group last year that resulted in a six-week output halt.
The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, a unit under India’s IT ministry that oversees cyber incidents, did not immediately respond to Reuters emails seeking comment.
APPLE ‘FACTORYDATA’
World Leaks, which has previously claimed responsibility for a Nike break-in, said on its dark net website that it was publishing stolen data from Tata Electronics.
Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the data and could not immediately reach World Leaks for comment.
The World Leaks website says the Tata Electronics data comprises more than 200,000 files totalling over 630 gigabytes. A database on its website shows several purported Apple files and folders, some titled “com.apple.factorydata”, and documents referring to “material specification”.
Indian cybersecurity researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia, who reviewed the Tata files on World Leaks for Reuters, said they also contain emails, event logs spanning several years and passport copies of employees including foreign nationals.
