Meat processing company JBS has been hit by a cyber attack that has shut down facilities in Australia and North America. JBS says it is currently unaware of “any evidence that data from customers, suppliers or employees has been stolen or misused.”
The US branch of Brazil’s JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world, said in a statement on Sunday it was hit by an “organized cyber attack”. Some US servers that support the North American and Australian IT systems were affected. Operation of all affected systems has been suspended. According to the company, the backup servers were not affected.
JBS USA says that no evidence has been found that data was stolen at this time, although the company acknowledges that solving the incident could take some time. This leaves the possibility that evidence will eventually emerge. The company does not provide further information about the attack, any exploited vulnerabilities or the course of action used.
Farmonline, among others, reports that tens of thousands of slaughterhouse workers in Australia have been sent home after several JBS factories in the country were shut down. It would be even larger numbers in the United States. JBS is the largest meat processor in Australia and has, among other things, a slaughterhouse in that country from which meat is exported to all kinds of other countries.
According to Beefcentral , at least in Australia, the impact is significant, as meat processors rely heavily on computer systems and internet connectivity, including for archiving, applying regulatory documents and counting. There are now said to be thousands of carcasses of slaughtered cows in Australia waiting to be treated and processed. According to Beefcentral, the deboning will take place on Wednesday, with manual counting and application of documents.
