EDP Renewables North America Discloses Data Breach

07 July 2020

EDP Renewables North America Discloses Data Breach

Renewable energy company EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA) has started informing customers that its internal systems were breached by cybercriminals.

EDPR NA is part of energy provider EDP Renováveis, which is headquartered in Madrid, Spain, and is a subsidiary of Energias de Portugal, the electric utilities company founded in 1976 by the government of Portugal.

In a notification letter to customers, EDPR NA revealed that its parent company was hit with a ransomware attack on April 13, 2020, which prompted an investigation in which both forensic experts and law enforcement were involved.

On May 8, 2020, EDPR NA learned that the attackers gained “unauthorized access to at least some information stored on the Company’s own information systems.”

The company also says that it has been working on identifying the affected individuals, and that it started sending notification letters “out of an abundance of caution,” although it does not have evidence that the attackers were able to access customers’ personal information.

However, EDPR NA does confirm that it stores on its servers personal information such as names and Social Security numbers.

“We maintain this information in order to make payments to you under the terms of your lease. We do not maintain any of your other personal information, such as your driver’s license number or credit or debit card information,” the notification letter reads.

The EDP Group appears to have been hit by the Ragnar Locker ransomware, with the attackers demanding a $10 million ransom and claiming to have downloaded terabytes of data from the company’s servers.

Ragnar Locker has been observed leveraging various methods of intrusion, including exploits or the targeting of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections, and its operators are known for stealing data from the victims’ environments. In May, the malware started deploying a full virtual machine to evade detection.