Bengaluru: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday launched an investigation into the incident of ‘cyberterrorist attack’ on government-owned National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), India’s largest aerospace research company, on November 15 last year.  

The federal anti-terror agency lodged a case in the ransomware attack incident, suspected to have been carried out by world's most notorious cybercrime enterprise called LockBit, revealed sources. 

An affiliate of the government’s Council of Scientific and Industry Research, NAL Bengaluru is the only government aerospace R&D laboratory in the country’s civilian sector. 

It came under a ransomware attack on November 15 last year. Subsequently, LockBit threatened the government-owned firm to publish the stolen data, including classified letters, if it failed pay an unspecified ransom amount.

One of the world’s most active ransomware-as-a-service operations groups, LockBit has been several times named in data theft and encryption, followed by extortion and data leak. 

Its name first came to fore in 2019, with its name at that time as ABCD. Since then, it has hacked into thousands of businesses, schools, medical facilities and government establishments around the world.