JBS paid $11 million in Bitcoin for ransom to settle cyberattack

JBS USA Holdings Inc paid a ransom of $11 million to the cybercriminals that temporarily halted its North American and Australian operations, the CEO of the meatpacking firm said in a statement on Wednesday.

The subsidiary of Brazilian meat company JBS SA, that process nearly a quarter of U.S. meat supply, halted cattle slaughtering at all of its plants for a day last week after the ransomware attack, which threatened to disrupt the supply chain and further inflate already high food prices. JBS is the world’s largest meat producer.

Andre Nogueira, the CEO of JBS USA, told WSJ that the ransom is paid, in Bitcoin, to protect the meat plants from further disruption and to limit the potential impact on farmers, grocery stores and restaurants that rely on JBS.

“It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers,” Nogueira told WSJ in an interview, who first reported the news. He also mentioned that the payment was made after the majority of JBS plants started running again.

The company said third-party forensic investigations are being carried out, and no final determinations have been made. Preliminary investigation results confirm that no company, customer, or employee data was compromised.

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Russia-linked hacking group REvil was behind the JBS cyberattack.

The ransomware attack followed one month after the attack on Colonial Pipeline Co, the largest fuel pipeline of the nation that disrupted fuel supply for several days in the Southeast region of the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday recovered around $2.3 million in Bitcoin ransom paid to cybercriminal group DarkSide by the fuel pipeline company.

Picture Credit: CNBC