“We are continuing to make progress towards a resolution, but the situation remains serious and we are still dependent on extraordinary measures to run many of our operations. This is particularly challenging within our Extruded Solutions business area, where the implementation of work-around solutions is both challenging and time-consuming,” says CFO Eivind Kallevik. 

The root cause of the problems has been detected and a cure has been identified, allowing Hydro’s experts to work on reverting infected systems back to a pre-infected state. Hydro is cooperating with relevant authorities, including Norway’s National Investigation Service (Kripos) and the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM). Hydro has reported the attack to the police.

“The malicious virus attack caused many of Hydro’s IT-systems to be shut down, not because they were infected but to contain the virus and prevent it from spreading further. Although the situation is progressing from day to day, it remains unclear how long it will take to restore stable I- operations. We need to cure the infected parts of our network, before reopening the healthy parts,” says head of information systems Jo De Vliegher.

Hydro is also working to ensure relevant supporting IT-functions are operational, such as systems for payroll, treasury and reporting, with interim work-around solutions being established when needed and possible.

There have been no reported safety incidents as a result of the cyber attack.

Update on operational status in the business areas

Energy: Production running as normal

Bauxite & Alumina: Production running as normal

Primary Metal: Production running as normal, with higher degree of manual operation

Rolled Products: Production running as normal, with higher degree of manual operation

Extruded Solutions: Extruded Solutions is currently running at approximately 50 percent of normal capacity, similar to the situation yesterday. Extruded Solutions is concentrating all available resources on enabling further restarts during the coming days to allow for continued deliveries to customers 

Hydro still does not have the full overview of the timeline towards normal operations, and it is still too early to estimate the exact operational and financial impact.