Project BLACKOUT: Industrial Ransomware Recovery

MISSION REPORT: OPERATION BLACKOUT

Target Entity: Steel Production Facility (Northern Italy)
Economic Impact: 2.5M EUR / Day in Lost Production
Threat Actor: LockBit 3.0 Affiliate

The Strategic Context

At 03:00 AM on a Sunday, the production control screens at a major steel foundry went black, replaced by a red ransom note. The threat actors demanded 15M USD in Bitcoin within 72 hours.

This was not just a data breach; it was a kinetic threat. The blast furnaces were full of molten metal. If the control systems (SCADA) remained offline for more than 48 hours, the metal would solidify inside the furnaces, effectively destroying the entire plant—a 500M EUR loss event. The internal IT team attempted to restore from backups, but the attackers had encrypted the backup servers first.

The Intervention: Crisis Command

Intarmour deployed a specialized Crisis Response Team to the site within 4 hours. We immediately assumed "Incident Command," relieving the exhausted internal IT staff.

Phase 1: The "Lifeboat" Protocol We recognized that cleaning the infected network would take too long. We physically severed the connection between the Corporate IT network (infected) and the Operational Technology (OT) network. We then built a parallel, air-gapped "Lifeboat Network" using 4G industrial routers and "Clean" laptops brought from our HQ.

Phase 2: Forensic Negotiation Our negotiators engaged the attackers via the Tor network. The goal was not to pay, but to buy time. We stalled the timer, gathering intelligence on the specific ransomware variant.

Phase 3: Manual Override While the negotiation distracted the enemy, our engineers manually flashed the firmware of the PLC controllers, bypassing the infected Windows servers entirely. We restored control of the furnaces using analog overrides and clean command terminals.

The Operational Outcome

• Production Resumed: The furnaces were stabilized and operational within 48 hours, preventing the catastrophic loss of the facility.
• Zero Ransom Policy: We successfully restored critical data from a "Cold Storage" offline tape backup that the client had forgotten they possessed. We did not pay a single Euro to the criminals.
• Future Hardening: We implemented a "Unidirectional Gateway" architecture (Data Diode). Now, data can flow out of the factory for monitoring, but no malware can ever flow in.

Strategic Lesson: In heavy industry, cyber safety is physical safety. Availability is the only metric that matters.