Hacker claims to have hit General Electric and stolen company data

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General Electric hit by possibly damaging cyberattack

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A hacker with the alias IntelBroker claims to have breached General Electric and stolen plenty of sensitive data from the company’s systems. 

General Electric is an American multinational conglomerate founded by, among others, Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan, back in 1892. The company operates in different fields, including aerospace, renewable energy, power, venture capital, and more. 

The hacker posted a new thread on an underground forum, selling access to the company’s “development and software pipelines” for $500. After failing to sell the access, IntelBroker decided to offer the data pulled from the endpoints, separately.

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GE investigating

"I previously listed the access to General Electrics, however, no serious buyers have actually responded to me or followed up,” the hacker was cited as saying. “I am now selling the entire thing here separately, including access (SSH, SVN etc).”

"Data includes a lot of DARPA-related military information, files, SQL files, documents etc."

To prove he was telling the truth, IntelBroker shared screenshots of what appears to be stolen GE data, including a database from GE Aviation apparently carrying military project data.

At the same time, BleepingComputer reached out to General Electric, which acknowledged IntelBroker’s claims and said it was looking into the matter. The company did not confirm, nor deny, the breach occurring:

"We are aware of claims made by a bad actor regarding GE data and are investigating these claims. We will take appropriate measures to help protect the integrity of our systems," a GE Spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

The publication also reminds its readers of IntelBroker’s track record. In the past, this threat actor compromised a Weee! Grocery service and stole sensitive data from the District of Columbia’s D.C. Health Link program. The latter raised quite a few eyebrows, because members of the House of Representatives were among the 17,000 people whose sensitive information was stolen.

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.