Hackers steal important data from Continental

Good morning dear readers,

What is a terrible nightmare for tens of thousands of company bosses (and at least as many IT managers) became a reality at Continental: Last week, the automotive supplier Handelsblatt confirmed information that the hacker and extortion gang “Lockbit 3.0” stole a significant amount of company data in August. It is the first time that such a massive data theft has become known at a Dax group.

The hackers apparently captured sensitive data. This emerges from a list that the attackers published on their blog on the dark web. The list includes, among other things, budget, investment and strategy plans, HR documents and confidential documents and communications from the executive and supervisory boards.

According to the list, the hackers also captured data related to customers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW. In the case of VW, for example, it is about specifications for software and control units as well as contractual conditions and specifications.

Continental declined to comment on the list when asked. Lockbit put the Conti data up for sale for $50 million late last week, after the company apparently did not want to pay a ransom. Side question: Is the password for your company computer actually “Start123!”? Then there is a need for action.

It’s a strangely motley club that meets in Bali today. Representatives of the absolutist monarchy of Saudi Arabia sit at a table with Joe Biden, the president of the world’s oldest existing democracy. The communist regime in Beijing is talking to the market economy motherland, Britain. Australia, with a population of just 26 million, sits on an equal footing with India, where more people live in the Delhi metropolitan area.

It is probably precisely the lack of ideological coherence that accounts for the relative success of the G20: if it is clear anyway that it is better not to start discussing ideological issues in the first place, pragmatic solutions can be found more quickly. Because the G20 resolutions are implemented voluntarily by the participants, there is no dispute about voting modalities. And because 86 percent of the world economy and 62 percent of the world population are gathered around the table, what the G20 decide and implement has more impact than all the votes of the UN General Assembly.

>> Read here: Draft final declaration – majority of G20 want to condemn war in Ukraine

But this time something is different at the G20 summit. Vladimir Putin is the head missing from the group, about whose politics most discussions will revolve – and whom many participants would probably prefer to take with them to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, folded up in diplomatic luggage. Germany’s “Mr. Geopolitics” Wolfgang Ischinger, head of the Munich Security Conference, judged in the Handelsblatt interview: “The fact that he only sends his foreign minister shows that Putin is aware of how isolated he has become. He figured he had nothing to gain from this summit.”

Yes, diplomats’ dreams have grown small these days. Host Indonesia has declared that it does not want to turn the G20 summit into a “Ukraine conflict summit”. Many emerging countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America regard the war in Eastern Europe as merely a regional event. “We keep hearing from these countries that there are also conflicts on their doorstep that the West is not interested in,” says a German government official.

But the negotiations on two major summit issues that are important to the emerging countries – food security and energy transition – are also marked by the Ukraine war.

During the night there was a breakthrough in Bali: the G20 agreed on a draft final declaration. Against initial resistance from Moscow, the EU and the western states are said to have prevailed that Russia’s war against Ukraine can be sharply condemned.

So now Amazon too: The world’s largest online retailer reportedly plans to lay off more than 10,000 employees in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times, Bloomberg and Washington Post. In the past few days, the technology companies Meta, Twitter and Salesforce had announced that thousands of jobs would be cut.

And then there is the Ukrainian Order of Merit, third class, which the country wants to award three journalists from Springer Verlag with, according to the dpa news agency: “Welt” editor-in-chief Ulf Poschardt, deputy “Bild” editor-in-chief Paul Ronzheimer and the responsible editor in the “Bild” politics department, Julian Röpcke. The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, congratulated on Twitter: “Through your courageous reporting, you opened the eyes of the Federal Republic to the fact that this war affects every German,” he wrote to Ronzheimer and Röpcke on Monday.

Above all, I have tremendous respect for Ronzheimer’s achievements as a war reporter. But to receive the Order of Merit from one of the two warring parties for this would seem strange to me. As if I hadn’t been impartial enough in my reporting. On the other hand, who wants to remain impartial in this war?

I wish you a day when you will be rewarded for your merits above all with your merit.

Best regards

Her

Christian Rickens

Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt

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