Topline
JBS has reopened all of its meat processing facilities worldwide and expects to make up for lost production within a week, the company said Thursday, a quick recovery after a ransomware attack blamed on a Russian hackers forced the company to shutter its U.S. plants.
A JBS meat plant in Lins, Brazil.
Key Facts
The Brazil-based company said the hackers failed to access its “core systems” or encrypted backup servers, limiting the damage from the weekend cyberattack.
JBS said it lost less than one day’s worth of output by pausing production earlier this week at many of its U.S. plants, which account for over 20% of the country’s overall beef and pork production capacity.
The company expects to recover from this slowdown in output by the end of next week.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reportedly said Thursday that cattle and hog slaughtering numbers have already recovered from earlier in the week, so the agency doesn’t expect the cyberattack to leave a lasting mark on food prices.
Crucial Quote
“Any lost production across the company’s global business will be fully recovered by the end of next week, limiting any potential negative impact on producers, consumers and the company’s workforce,” the company said in a statement.
Key Background
JBS says its U.S. and Australian IT systems fell victim to a cyberattack on Sunday, an incident the White House later characterized as ransomware, a strategy in which hackers threaten to damage a victim in some way unless they make an extortion payment. The company hasn’t commented on the size of the ransom demand or whether it plans on paying up. The Federal Bureau of Investigation thinks a well-known Russian-speaking collective called REvil is responsible for the hack, making it the latest in a string of recent cyberattacks blamed on either Russian government-linked entities or criminals believed to be operating in Russia.
