In a notice to customers and suppliers, the organization said it had exhausted every available option before seeking insolvency protection. Managing director Johannes Zenglein described the filing as “one of the most difficult steps in our company’s 37-year history.” “The cyberattack of March 29, 2026, however, impacted our company to an extent that we could not fully compensate for despite our best efforts,” Zenglein wrote. “The consequences resulted in a production outage of nearly six weeks and significant financial strain. These effects ultimately impacted our financial situation so severely that filing for insolvency became necessary.”
Wow.
ZEGO did not disclose what kind of attack it suffered, whether ransomware was involved, who was behind it, or whether customer or employee data was compromised.
Wait a minute… ಠಿ_ಠ
On the one hand, I understand that production stopping can sometimes cost millions of dollars a day in lost market. On the other hand, if six weeks makes you go under, maybe next time you should think about actually securing your network or having a little bit more solvency.
Or they were already having problems and this is a good way to placate shareholders. I’m betting it’s that.
From my Monday morning armchair, I think it’s a fair assumption that their business was already in a downward trajectory. The automobile industry used to be the plow horse of the German economy and plenty of businesses down the supply line have suffered for their inability to move with the times and ditch internal combustion engines. Automobile gets a mention in passing but thanks to various more or less elected madmen doing their mad things in various crises on this planet I doubt any of the other fields mentioned were putting them in a better position. So either they were dumb about their IT security or the diminished security was due to their economical situation in a confounding clusterfuck.
I find it fascinating to think that you could ruin a competitor now simply by hiring a ransomware as a service outfit. If you know they’re on the ropes, they probably cheap out on IT. Send the bitcoin fueled North Koreans in and soon you can buy it up for cheap. I don’t think that’s overly paranoid to consider today.
Could be that the companies they supplied to filed for damages, due to them not meeting supply targets…