In the wake of a recent cybertack that shut down many of its plants, billion-dollar meat processing company JBS has paid ransom 11 million in bitcoin to hackers. This frustration is another example of a monstrous corporation that demanded millions of dollars in ransom for cybersecurity. JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company, handed over the ransom to it on Wednesday, June 08. They claimed that the money was transferred after most of their systems were backed up, but they decided to pay the cybercatchers to prevent any future leaks. .
Preliminary investigations revealed that no agency, customer, or employee data was compromised. “It was a very difficult decision for our organization and for me personally,” JBS USA CEO Andre Noguera said in a press release. “However, we feel that this decision should be made to prevent any potential risk to our customers.” The attack was a ransom attack through which hackers entered a computer network and threatened to leak, disrupt or delete files until a ransom was paid.
On Sunday, May 30, Cybertack was launched against JBS’s computer system and quickly forced the billion-dollar company to temporarily shut down slaughterhouses and plants across the United States, Canada and Australia. According to JBS, the FBI said the ransom attack was carried out by “one of the world’s most sophisticated and sophisticated cybercriminal groups.” The White House has previously called the group “probably Russia-based.”
In early May 2021, an oil pipeline system carrying gas and jet fuel across southeastern America began a very similar ransom attack against the colonial pipeline, causing gas shortages and panic in some parts of the United States. Like JBS, the Colon colonial pipeline company decided to pay a release price, reportedly 75 bitcoins (then about $4.4million). Unexpectedly, the U.S. Department of Justice said it had seized 63.7 bitcoins (valued at about $2.3 million at the time) from those responsible for hacking the Dar colonial pipeline in Eastern Europe, known as “Darkside”. After getting the FBI private key, they got their hands on the money – which effectively works somewhat like a password that gives someone access to the cryptocurrency – and unlocks the hacking group’s wallet.
