A Canadian mining company has acknowledged being hit with a ransomware attack shortly after concluding a deal worth $230 million for the sale of an exploration site in Australia.
Vancouver-based Copper Mountain Mining Corp. said Thursday its IT systems suffered a ransomware attack on December 27th.
That was 12 days after announcing the sale of its Eva Copper Project and its 2,100 km2 exploration land package in Queensland, Australia.
The combined cash and considerations value of the deal was initially announced as a total of US$149 million. Three days later that was amended to US$250 million. That included US$129 million (net of withholding taxes) and gross upfront cash consideration of US$60 million, which depends on the discovery of new ore deposits.
It isn’t known if the cyber attack was related to the announcement.
In October, the world’s second-largest copper producer, German-based Aurubis, suffered a cyber attack. “This was apparently part of a larger attack on the metals and mining industry,” Aurubis said in a news release.
Meanwhile, the Bleeping Computer news site said that on Dec. 13, a cybercriminal offered to sell account credentials belonging to a CMMC…
