The ECHO revealed that the car manufacturing giant was hit by a cyber attack a week ago
A look inside Jaguar Land Rover, Halewood(Image: Jaguar Land Rover Halewood)
Jaguar Land Rover has provided an update on the current crisis hitting the company after production was shut down across all its sites one week ago. The ECHO revealed that the nation’s biggest car manufacturer was hit by a cyber attack last Monday that is continuing to cause havoc.
The car manufacturing giant, which is owned by India’s Tata group, swiftly shut down all production at its sites across the UK and around the world following the attack, which the firm is still working to resolve. This includes thousands of staff at its Halewood plant in Merseyside and its other UK plants in Solihull and Wolverhampton.
Staff based at Halewood told the ECHO they were first told of the shut down via an email at 4.30am on September 1, telling them not to come to work.
Another shift was sent home from the Halewood plant.
As the crisis continues, staff at Halewood have been told to stay away from the site until at least Wednesday of this week.
The staff have been asked to be ready to work on Wednesday unless told otherwise by email.
Staff will continue to be paid as usual and will “bank” their hours to be picked up later on.
In a new statement released this weekend, a spokesperson for JLR said: “We continue to work around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner following the recent cyber incident.
Jaguar Land Rover has a major plant in Halewood
“We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists and alongside law enforcement.
“We want to thank all our customers, partners, suppliers and colleagues for their patience and support.
“We are very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused. Our retail partners remain open and we will continue to provide further updates.”
A group of young hackers who targeted Marks and Spencer and other British brands in recent cyber hacks have reportedly claimed responsibility for the JLR attack.
The BBC reported on Wednesday that the gang has bragged about the hack on instant messaging platform Telegram and shared screenshots purporting to be from the car manufacturer’s internal IT system.
It comes after a spate of cyber attacks across the UK retail sector earlier this year, with M&S, the Co-op and Harrods among those worst affected.
The gang made the claims on a Telegram channel which is called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, a combination of three English language speaking, hacking groups known as Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.