After a hacker attack Meat producer JBS pays ransom

Status: 10.06.2021 7:13 a.m.

The world’s largest meat company JBS has apparently paid a ransom of $ 11 million after a cyber attack by hackers. It was another incident in a series of corporate blackmail cases in the United States. The US subsidiary of the Brazilian meat processor JBS paid the equivalent of eleven million dollars in ransom after a hacker attack. The payment was made to prevent further disruption by the hackers and to restore the smooth operation of the affected locations, said the Dallas-based company. According to the US media, the payment was made in Bitcoin. According to the US government, the company had received a ransom note from a criminal organization likely based in Russia. The attack paralyzed JBS production in Australia and affected Canada and the United States.

“A difficult decision”

“This was a very difficult decision for our company and for me personally,” explained Managing Director Andre Nogueira. “However, we felt that this decision had to be made in order to avoid any potential risk to our customers.” The investigations are still ongoing, but preliminary results have suggested “that no company, customer or employee data has been compromised.”

US investigators suspect Russia is behind it

US President Joe Biden said last week that investigators had linked Russia to the JBS case. “JBS USA was in constant contact with government officials throughout the incident,” the company said. In the USA, the state and business are currently fighting a series of attacks with blackmail software known as “ransomware”. The data of the attacked systems are encrypted. The hackers demand cash payments in cryptocurrency so that they can unlock access again and not publish the data.

Ransom payment in Bitcoin

The US utility company was also last month Colonial pipeline The victim of a hacker attack with a blackmail Trojan that temporarily shut down the entire pipeline network. The US Federal Police FBI blames a hacker group called “Darkside” for the attack and later tracked down the ransom of 75 Bitcoin that Colonial had paid – at the time it was worth $ 4.4 million.