Russian Hackers Behind Cyberattack That Shut Down Jaguar Land Rover, Including Slovak Plant

Russian hackers were responsible for a devastating cyberattack on British automaker Jaguar Land Rover last August that halted production for five weeks, including at the company's plant in Slovakia, according to a report by an American newspaper. The attack, which struck in late August, paralyzed the entire Jaguar Land Rover group and prevented the resumption of production for five weeks. It has been identified as the costliest cyberattack in British economic history, costing the UK more than two billion euros in 2025 alone. The automaker itself incurred direct costs exceeding 300 million euros as a result of the incident. The majority of the company's roughly 5,000 Slovak employees were affected by the production shutdown. Jaguar Land Rover operates a significant manufacturing facility in Slovakia, making the country directly vulnerable to disruptions at the British parent company. The attribution of the attack to Russian state-linked hackers places the incident within a broader pattern of cyberwarfare targeting Western industrial and economic infrastructure, a concern that has grown sharply across Europe since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The scale of the financial damage underscores the increasing threat that state-sponsored cyberattacks pose to major manufacturers and the national economies dependent on them.