The largest meat producer in the world, JBS, has closed its plants in the United States, Canada and Australia due to a cyber attack that the White House has assured that “probably comes from a criminal organization based in Russia.” of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, has stated that “the JBS notified the Administration that the ransom demand came from a criminal organization, probably based in Russia.” The White House statement comes less than a month after another large ransom-demand cyberattack temporarily shut down the network of pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline, which supplies about 45% of the fuel consumed on the east coast of the United States. Jean-Pierre noted that the Joe Biden government offered assistance to JBS, and that the Department of Agriculture has spoken several times with the company’s leaders. “The White House is in direct contact with the Russian government on this matter and sends the message that responsible states do not harbor ‘ransomware’ criminals, “said the spokeswoman.” Ransomware “is a scheme that takes advantage of security flaws in a computer system to lock it down and then demand a ransom to restart it. Impacted plants JBS, a multinational company based in Brazil specialized in products based on beef, chicken and pork, is one of the largest agri-food companies in the world, with operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, Mexico, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. United. “JBS USA determined to be the target of an organized cybersecurity attack, affecting some of the servers that support its computer systems in North America and Australia,” said Jo the company in a statement Monday.JBS said its backup servers were not affected by the incident, but the statement did not provide details on the status of the plants. In Australia, JBS operations were paralyzed by the attack, and up to 10,000 workers were sent home without pay, according to a union delegate. “This is affecting JBS’s processing plants (in Australia),” he told AFP. Queensland union branch secretary, Matt Journeaux. “They have removed workers at all JBS operations,” he added. Several JBS plants in North America were also affected. In the United States, a power company in Wisconsin reported that there would be no production on Monday. Another plant in Utah was also not operating. In Iowa, one plant was left with four departments idle, while the remaining units were operating normally. The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents workers in Colorado and Wyoming, said the “slaughterhouse” and “manufacturing” shifts were canceled on Monday. JBS’s Canadian division canceled some operations on Monday and early Tuesday, but then indicated on Facebook that it would restart production normally. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities The closure of Colonial Pipeline for several days in May prompted panic buying in some US states, and ended when the company paid hackers $ 4.4 million to unlock their systems, the firm acknowledged. US authorities blamed DarkSide, a group of cybercriminals allegedly based in Russia, for the attack. something that Moscow denies.Colonial Pipeline’s computer vulnerabilities led the Biden government last week to impose cybersecurity requirements on pipelines for the first time. JBS and Colonial Pipeline incidents follow the cyberattack on software company SolarWinds in 2020, attributed to a group backed by the Russian state. Last week, Microsoft warned that the group behind the cyber attack on SolarWinds had resurfaced with a series of attacks on government agencies, think tanks, consultancies and other organizations. We must adapt to address new and emerging threats, “US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. In May, US President Joe Biden signed an order executive to improve US cybersecurity following the cyber attack on the Co oil pipeline lonial, the largest in the country. The White House then recalled “the incidents with SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange” as a “sobering reminder that US public and private sector entities increasingly face malicious cyber activity and sophisticated, both from state actors and cybercriminals.
