https://www.poynter.org/reporting-e...s-continue-this-time-on-americas-food-supply/
.....JBS, which is based in Brazil,
told the U.S. government that it had gotten a ransom demand. Security experts say the attack appears to have come from a ransomware gang named Pinchy Spider which operates out of Russia and uses a malware called REvil. The group has been in operation since at least 2019.
Other
reports, quoting cyber experts, point the finger directly at Russia — and have gone so far as to call it a “war situation.”
And it may only get worse because it’s so profitable. DarkSide, the Eastern European group behind the Colonial Pipeline attack, brought in a cool $90 million in just nine months from an estimated 47 victims, according to a report from
Elliptic.
But Hitesh Sheth, president and CEO at
Vectra, a San Jose, California-based AI cybersecurity company, said the murkiness of the operations makes it very hard to put a finger on the culprit.
REvil — pronounced like the letter “R” followed by the word “evil” — is mostly comprised of native Russian speakers. It is also believed to be based in a former Soviet state.
The organization runs a site on the dark web, anachronistically known as the “Happy Blog.” If victims don’t comply with demands, the group posts stolen documents on its blog.
“We know that they are protected most likely by Russian intelligence or the Russian government, as are most ransomware groups, which has allowed them to flourish over the last 18 months,” Marc Bleicher of Arete Incident Response, a cybersecurity firm that specializes in negotiations with criminal hackers,
previously told CNBC.
There
may be a connection between this attack and the attack on the Colonial pipeline in that the code used in the ransomware could come from the same source,
according to security firm Flashpoint. The FBI has been
warning about the rise of REvil for some time.
Don’t be surprised if meat prices rise, even after a short interruption. April’s pork and beef prices
were up 4.8% and 3.3% compared to a year ago due to a range of things, including a labor shortage, summer demand and restaurants starting to reopen.
“JBS USA and Pilgrim’s are a critical part of the food supply chain and we recognize our responsibility to our team members, producers and consumers to resume operations as soon as possible,” said Andre Nogueira, JBS USA CEO. “Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat. We have cybersecurity plans in place to address these types of issues and we are successfully executing those plans. Given the progress our IT professionals and plant teams have made in the last 24 hours, the vast majority of our beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will be operational (Wednesday).”
In the U.S. today, JBS USA and Pilgrim’s were able to ship product from nearly all of its facilities to supply customers. The company also continues to make progress in resuming plant operations in the U.S. and Australia. Several of the company’s pork, poultry and prepared foods plants were operational today and its Canada beef facility resumed production.