Russia’s hackers leveled a malware attack on an Iowa creating co-op and required 5.9 million dollars to resume computer networks that operate food supply chains and also eating plans on track for millions of cattle, chickens, and hogs.
A source close to the firm (spoke on the condition of anonymity) described to the news agency The Washington Post that Fort Dodge-based New Co-operative (a coalition of farmers that trade in soy and corn products) held the break and acknowledged the problem of the system to continue accepting distributing feed.
The source said further explained that the company shut down its computer system to separate the intrusion and even halted its soil mapping computer software, a main controlling system that manages fertilization and irrigation, as protection.
The food and agribusiness sector manager of Wells Fargo (Tim Luginsland) said that at the same time, farmers used paper scale tickets to record their grain hauls after they cut them off at the firm.
Source: Web
Hacker group threatened to release source code of the software
Cybersecurity specialists who studied the attack that the hacking group, the BlackMatter, showed their intention to release a terabyte of the firm’s data that includes development, research and invoices documents, and even source code of the company’s soil mapping software, in case if the company didn’t pay the amount in cryptocurrency by 25th of September.
On 3rd September, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) threatened that agriculture manufacturers were vulnerable to Russian hackers. In June, another REvil (Russian cybercrime cell) executed a cyber-attack on the world’s biggest meat producer, JBS. Moreover, the firm that runs in America, Brazil, Australia, and Canada, ultimately gave an eleven million dollars ransom payment.
The IIC (Iowa Institute off Cooperative) endowed professor of economics at Iowa University, Prof. Bobby J. Martens, explained that massive amounts of money move with the shifting of agricultural supplies, and multi-millions of dollars are transferred back and forth. Furthermore, he continued that the bad people are going to see those transfers, and there is an incredible amount of currency that exchanges hands in this region.
