Boeing Confirms $200 Million Ransom Demand in LockBit Attack

In October 2023, Boeing fell victim to the LockBit ransomware program. This week, the company disclosed that the attackers demanded a ransom of $200 million.

Boeing confirmed to the news portal CyberScoop that it is indeed the multinational aerospace and defense corporation mentioned in the indictment released by the U.S. Department of Justice. This was also confirmed by the leader of LockBit under the pseudonym LockBitSupp.

Boeing declined to comment further and referred all inquiries to the FBI. The FBI, in turn, did not provide any comments.

It was initially suspected that Boeing had not paid the ransom, and about 43 GB of the company’s data was published on the LockBit site in early November. At that time, the company confirmed a “cyber incident that affected the logistics side of the business but did not impact flight safety.” Boeing has not commented on the data published by the extortionists.

The indictment notes that Boeing exemplified the “extraordinarily large” ransom demands that LockBit has been imposing on its victims, having collected over $500 million in ransoms since the beginning of 2020.

Ransomware analyst Brett Callow suggested that this was the second-largest ransom demand known to have been made public. Callow also expressed the opinion that LockBit likely had no real expectation of receiving such a sum, and the high demand was probably an attempt to “see what would happen.”

It is worth noting that authorities in the United Kingdom recently identified the alleged leader of what was once the largest cybercriminal group, LockBit, who operated under the pseudonym LockBitSupp. According to law enforcement, he turned out to be one Dmitry Khoroshev. This information was obtained after law enforcement agencies at the international level seized the infrastructure of LockBit in February of this year. The authorities of the United Kingdom, the USA, and Australia have since imposed a substantial package of sanctions on him.