Hackers increasingly target critical infrastructure.
JBS SA, the largest meat producer globally is the latest victim of cyberattacks that caused over One-Fifth of U.S. Beef Capacity to be Wiped Out over a few clicks.
The cyberattack forced the shutdown of all JBS’s U.S. beef plants facilities that account for almost a quarter of American supplies according to an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents workers at the company’s plants in the U.S.
All other JBS meatpacking facilities in the country experienced some level of disruption, according to the official.
The White House has said that the ransomware attack was likely carried out by a Russia-based criminal organization, and that it is dealing with the Russian government on the matter.
Experience
I would not hold my breath on any United State government related positive outcome over any cyberattack.
Every Corporation must realize they are on their own to secure their computerized networked systems.
Circle the wagons, there is NO U.S. cavalry coming to your rescue.
How We Got Here
I setup my first TCP network up in 1994, DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) did not exist, and I had to update every machine LMHOST file with IP address assigned to machine host name when adding a new device to the networks, and we had thousands of them across the enterprise I worked for in California back then.
The network communications protocol was NetBEUI (NetBIOS Extended User Interface). Single LAN communication protocol which does not support routing to other networks, which I and my team removed for TCP.
What was interesting back then too was we had Plastic Injection molding machines that we installed new Prologic Controllers to run the machines instead of having humans pushing buttons to operate them. I worked with two very interesting Russian Engineers, one claimed he helped design the Russian Military Mi-24 Hind attack helicopter in Russia during the cold war. We joked about how after we are done, we could operate these Plastic Injection molding machines via the internet from a yacht in the Caribbean.
We had no clue at that time the ramifications of what we were doing, and how the rest of the world like us would expose critical infrastructure to the salivating hackers of today.
Just a thought
Might be a good idea to go back to NetBEUI for all Prologic systems that run critical infrastructure, then have TCP running only on unsecure systems with daily unattached backups.
But I am sure the on-premise systems have probably been replaced with cloud-based systems, thus going back to a secure network is probably impossible for most of these companies.
They will probably secretly pay the ransome like the rest, pass on the expense to the price of meat to the consumer (no more cheap Big Mac® Quarter Pounder®s), while the next victims are being taken out as we speak.
Rule of thumb, if you open a ransomware file by mistake, disconnect your computer from the network immediately. If the ransomware cannot contact its master server to send the key it will not start encrypting your files.
Anyone else have a problem with these cyberattacks and the hackers getting paid millions if not billions?
References:
Reference 1: finance.yahoo.com – meat latest cyber victim hackers
Reference 2: cnn.com- JBS cyberattack meat shortage
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