JBS Cyberattack Disrupts Australian Meat Production
Thousands of Australian meat workers have had no work for a second day after a cyberattack crippled the world’s largest meat processing company.
Canberra, Australia (AP) - Thousands of Australian meat workers on Tuesday had no work for a second day after a cyberattack at the world's largest meat processing company. A government minister said it may take a few days for production to resume.
JBS is also Australia's largest meat and food processing company, with 47 facilities across the country including slaughterhouses, feedlots and meat processing sites. JBS employs around 11,000 people.
JBS USA said in a statement from Greeley, Colorado on Monday that it was the target of an "organized cyber security attack" on Sunday, affecting some servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems.
"The company's backup servers were not affected and it is actively working with an incident response firm to restore its systems as quickly as possible," the statement said.
Australian Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said the government and the Australian Federal Police were working with JBS to address the problems and take action against those responsible.
"Despite the fact that JBS accounts for about 20% of our processing production in Australia, we are not expecting a significant impact on exports, unless it is a long shutdown," Littleproud said on Tuesday.
“We are also working with JBS in Australia to make sure we get to some limited capacity over the next few days. JBS has been very active in this,” he said.
Littleproud said it was too early to say whether it was a ransomware attack or who might be responsible for it.
Australian employees came to know about the attack when they were evicted from their workplace on Monday.
JBS exports about 70% of its production to Australia. But Australia and New Zealand account for only 4% of the company's global revenue.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that several cattle consignments in the state of Queensland were canceled at short notice and cattle trucks overturned.
"We were supposed to send them on Sunday afternoon and then we got the message in the morning that they would have to cancel the train because the meat work was going to stop indefinitely," Queensland ranchman Colin Baker told ABC.
"Our day is wasted. . . Because collecting the cattle, sorting them and then taking them there and then we had to bring them home today and let them all go again,” Baker said.