Attack Claims
The Hunters International Ransomware Group has claimed to have exploited the Taiwanese plastics company Formosa Plastics. The group has claimed to have exfiltrated 1.2 TB of data relating to lawsuits and previous cyberattacks and has threatened to publish that data in fourteen hours if the company does not respond.
No public statement has been made by Formosa Plastics as of this publication.
Who is FPC?
It is worth noting that the above image from the ransomware site denotes the Formosa Plastics, USA which is a subsidiary of parent company, Formosa Plastics. This subsidiary was founded n 1978 and appears to be the primary target of the attack.
On April 28th, 2024, Formosa Plastics, USA announced that it had been the victim of a cyberattack. That announcement reads below:
“Recently, Formosa Plasticsdiscovered that it had experienced a data breach in which sensitive personal identifiable information and protected health information in its systems may have been accessed. On April 29, 2024, Formosa Plastics began notifying individuals whose information may have been impacted. The type of information potentially exposed includes: Name, Social Security number, Government-issued identification, Medical information”
Formosa Plastics Corporation (FPC) is a Taiwanese plastics company based in Taiwan (formerly called “Formosa”) that primarily produces polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins and other intermediate plastic products. Despite the claims on the Hunters International page, the company actually employees about 10,000 employees and has assets totaling 16.3B USD. Formosa Plastics Corporation, USA was founded in 1978 as a wholly owned subsidiary of FPC. That subsidiary has, in turn, created four wholly owned chemical manufacturing subsidiaries in Delaware City, Delaware, Illiopolis, Illinois, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Point Comfort, Texas.
Hunters International
Hunters International Ransomware Group appears to be a rebrand of Hive which was effectively disrupted by the United States Department of Justice in 2023 after extorting 100M USD from more than 1500 victims. The code and methodology used by Hunters bares striking resemblance to Hive. However, in October 2023, several Hunters members refuted claims of a rebrand and urged their ingenuity despite admitting to purchasing encryptor source code from Hive developers. BleepingComputer made these initial findings back in November 2023.