Crown's website has been down since June 10Crown Equipment Corporation, the world’s fourth largest forklift manufacturer, has become the victim of a cyber-attack that’s halted production worldwide and affected its payroll, phone system and website.
Privately-held Crown made no public statement about the attack for eight days, prompting employees to vent their frustration and fears on social media.
On June 19, the company issued a statement confirming it had been under attack from “an international cybercriminal organisation”.
Crown’s website has been offline since June 10 and the company’s phone lines are not working.
According to social media posts, Crown employees have been told not to come to work until June 24.
“The company is working with some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts as well as federal law enforcement to analyse the data and determine the appropriate next steps,” Crown says in the statement.
“The company is still working through the disruption caused by the attack and is making progress toward transitioning to normal business operations.
“Crown is also working closely with its customers to help reduce the effect the incident may have on their operations.”
An unnamed Crown employee told the Mercer County Outlook the company had told some staff not to come to work.
“They have told us that we must use our vacation time or file for unemployment because they will not be paying us, and that they will not be providing us with a mass layoff number,” the employee says in the June 17 news report.
“Nobody knows what is going on or when we will return to work”.
German technology writer Günter Born has been investigating the cyber attack for more than a week.
Citing two unnamed Crown employees on his blog, Born's Tech and Windows World, Born reported the cyber attack meant the company could no longer track its parts.
Crown, founded in 1945, employs 19,600 people globally, has 24 manufacturing plants in 14 locations worldwide and more than 500 retail locations in 80 countries.
The company has a 7% share of the global forklift market and an estimated revenue of EUR3.4 billion (USD3.65 billion) in 2022.
In March last year, parts distributor TVH was the victim of a cyber attack which put its warehouses and e-commerce platforms out of action for several weeks.