ista International GmbH is a multinational company that manages data and processes that make buildings climate-friendly, safe and comfortable. As they describe themselves:

We see the future of our success in the Internet of Things (IoT). Very soon billions of devices will talk directly to each other. This communication will largely take place in and around buildings. With our digital infrastructure, we are in an excellent position to support property owners and residents with smart and intelligent solutions. Today, we already have 400,000 gateways in use for our customers that link over 25 million connected devices to each other.

Recently, though, ista fell prey to an attack by Daixin Team.  A notice now appears on their homepage:

A detailed message and FAQ appear on their website. The notice begins:

Dear ista customers,
currently, ista’s IT-System have been the victim of an external cyber-attack. As an immediate measure and to help prevent damage to our IT infrastructure, all potentially affected IT systems of the company have been taken offline. As a result, you will temporarily be limited or unable to use certain functions and services. We are very sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause you and ask for your continued patience as we try to resolve the issue.

We have informed the State Data Protection Authority and filed a report with the police. A specialist team of internal and external experts is currently conducting a thorough investigation of the incident and is working at full speed to remedy the disruption as quickly as possible. However, this may take some time.

You can access their full update and FAQ on their site.

Yesterday, Daixin added ista’s name to their dark web leak site with three file lists. Today, they started leaking some of the data.

In communications with DataBreaches, a spokesperson for Daixin wrote that in a matter of days, and from one unprivileged user access, Daixin easily obtained all the rights in the following domains: ROOT, DS, IT, PL, AT, ES, NL, BE, DE

In describing its company, ista writes, in part:

With our digital infrastructure, we are in an excellent position to support property owners and residents with smart and intelligent solutions. Today, we already have 400,000 gateways in use for our customers that link over 25 million connected devices to each other.

According to Daixin, they went through one of those gateways and took control of the entire system in two days.

“We were not interested in users – we encrypted all servers,” their spokesperson wrote to DataBreaches, adding, “Encryption was a long process. We encrypted petabytes of data. (Servers and backups)

We saw the panic of the administrators.

They couldn’t log in and do something about it.

All security features have been disabled, administrator accounts have been blocked.

When asked, Daixin’s spokesperson estimated that more than three thousand of ista’s servers have been fully encrypted.

“Maybe more, we went offline but the encryption continued,” they added.

DataBreaches also inquired whether ista had attempted to negotiate any ransom at all.  It seems they had, but their offer was unacceptable to Daixin, who provided DataBreaches with a snippet from their chat on August 8:

At this point, Daixin will continue to release more data, it seems.

DataBreaches sent an inquiry to ista’s media relations email address, but no reply was immediately received.