European multinational conglomerate ThyssenKrupp has disclosed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that successfully stole confidential business data.

The steelmaker said that it believes the “professional attack” most likely originated from Southeast Asia, and added that its defense business, which is involved in the manufacturing of submarines, was not compromised.

To steal steel

“At present there is no reliable estimation as to the damage (e.g. loss of intellectual property) caused by the attack,” tk’s head of external communications Robin Zimmermann said in a blog post.

“It has been noted that fragments of data have been stolen in the areas involved in the attack. Content of this loss of data is not clear yet, with the exception of certain project data in an operative engineering company.”

Zimmermann added: “The incident is not attributable to security deficiencies at thyssenkrupp. Human error can also be ruled out. Experts say that in the complex IT landscapes of large companies, it is currently virtually impossible to provide viable protection against organized, highly professional hacking attacks.”

The conglomerate, which consists of 670 companies, discovered the attack in April, and believes it took place in February.

ThyssenKrupp is a member of the Deutsche Cyber-Sicherheitsorganisation (German Cyber-Safety Organization), a cyber security start up created last year by Allianz, BASF, Bayer and Volkswagen to secure corporations from attacks.

In August, Volkswagen’s head of IT, Martin Hofmann, claimed that the carmaker had to deal with around 6,000 cyber attacks a week.

This is not the first time ThyssenKrupp has suffered a cyber espionage attack - back in 2012, Der Spiegel reported that the company, and Airbus parent EADS, had been hacked by the Chinese.