New Cooperative

History

2021: Ransomware Virus Attack

At the end of September 2021, the New Cooperative agricultural group was exposed, to the attack ransomware which could jeopardize the activities of a company that plays a key role agricultural in the product supply chain.

A representative of New Cooperative confirmed the attack on September 20, 2021, noting in a statement that the company had identified this incident in advance, which affected some of the company's devices and systems and brought the systems offline to localize the threat. The company notified law enforcement agencies in a short time and works closely with data security experts to investigate and correct this situation.

New Cooperative Survived Ransomware Attack

Screenshots were leaked to social networks with negotiations between participants in New Cooperative and BlackMatter. Representatives of New Cooperative have repeatedly stated that they are part of the widely discussed 16 critical sectors. In addition to the statement that this is part of the country's critical infrastructure, the company noted that in the near future there will be a violation of public order in the supply chain of grain, pork and chicken.

The BlackMatter group said it encrypted New Cooperative data and stole one terabyte of the company's files, including invoices, research and development documents, and the source code of soil mapping technology. Hackers demanded that the company pay $5.9 million in cryptocurrency until September 25, otherwise the stolen data will be published.

Allan Liska, a senior intelligence analyst at Recorded Future's cybersecurity group, was among the security experts monitoring the ransomware virus attack on September 20, 2021, and said it remains to be seen how far-reaching the attack can be.

What is interesting here is the CISA reference by New Cooperative in published chats. We know that the agent behind the BlackMatter is a little coward who ran away and hid after the Colonial Pipeline attack. New Cooperative probably refers to CISA for the same reason, let's see if it has the same impact, "said Recorded Future cybersecurity analyst Allan Liska.

As Markus Fowler, director of strategic threats at Darktrace, noted, if BlackMatter is indeed DarkSide 2.0, then this is evidence that the negotiations and warnings of the president did not have a great impact. Judging by the details available, there are striking parallels between this attack and recent campaigns against Colonial Pipeline and JBS.^[1]

Notes