BERLIN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Operations at the Munich-based engineering group KraussMaffei are returning to "normal conditions" and production is being ramped up again. The company has no knowledge that customers or suppliers had also been victim to a recent ransomware attack, a company spokesperson confirmed on Friday.
After the attack more than two weeks ago, KraussMaffei has had to scale back production at some of its plants as several computers had been hit by a so-called Trojan horse virus, the spokesperson added.
According to German media reports, the cyber attackers used ransomware to blackmail the German machinery producer, which did not want to comment on the amount demanded.
The plant in Munich with approximately 1,800 employees was particularly affected by the attack. Individual controls in production and assembly could no longer be started because the Trojan virus had encrypted computer files and rendered certain controls temporarily unusable, the company reported.
German security authorities had been informed immediately after the attack on the night of Nov. 21.
The Federal Office for Information on Security (BSI), to which corporations report such incidents, did not comment on the attack on KraussMaffei on Friday. Although it has not been confirmed that the attackers used a version of the Emotet malware, just two days ago the BSI issued a warning about Emotet.
"Emotet is regarded as one of the most dangerous malware threats worldwide" and would be currently causing substantial damage in Germany to the affected systems, the BSI wrote. Emotet spreads via Microsoft's Office software running on Windows computers.
The KraussMaffei Group is a manufacturer of machinery and equipment for the production and processing of plastics and rubber.
