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So this random article [0] I googled says it's ransomware. Can that really be called an "attack" ? JBS said: not aware of any evidence that any customer,

So this random article [0] I googled says it's ransomware. Can that really be called an "attack" ? JBS said: not aware of any evidence that any customer, supplier, or employee data has been compromised So the "attackers" didn't steal anything. Give them the finger then, restore from backup, get upset about losing 25 minutes of data and keep going. How are ransomware "attacks" still a thing ? Why is any of the software that controlls meat-cutting/oil pipeline hardware not air-gapped under normal operations? How is there no plan on how to continue operating when losing power, so that stuff still works? One of these "attacks" pops up every three days and I get that if data is exfiltrated then the problem is not the same. BUT "someone encrypted all my data" and "oh shit, my harddrive crashed" have almost the exact same recovery plan and we have dedicated a complete international holiday called World Backup Day[1] over ten years ago to remind people of the principles of how that works that were known since at least when harddrives where invented. It's not an attack, it's pure negligence. It's not special IT SuperHighTechnologyKnowledge either. It's a simple principle: Things need to exist in at least three places in case one of them breaks and the other explodes/tornadoes/earthquakes. The slightly advanced corollary is: Make sure that the thing in the three places is actually the thing that it should be. ... It's not like I do not understand how organizations fail at this that or the other and that maybe the tradeoffs here were made correctly, but it still boggles the mind. [0] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/06/01/cyberattack-on-jbs-n2590301 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/06/01/cyber... [1] http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/ http://www.worldbackupday.com/en/

worik 5y ago
"How are ransomware "attacks" still a thing ?" It is cheaper to build a shoddy system out of the pre-made parts that software companies sell. A shiny very capable system can be built quickly, and cheaply. To build a robust system, segmented, properly backed up, maintained professionally... costs a lot more. To have staff on your payroll who understand your systems, who can maintain your systems and recover your systems in a disaster means having expensive professionals on the payroll who look like they are doing nothing. When your whole business goes into a paralysis because of the costs you saved, there will be some one to blame. Some clerk in a office that "clicked on a attachment" - it is their fault.... Yes, it is cheaper in the long run to build robust maintained systems. But in the long run we are all dead, and our bonuses will be paid before the catastrophe, and anyway it is "some body else's fault".
- handrous 5y ago
  I think a lot of the "cost savings" and "efficiency" of sticking everything on computers and putting them online would evaporate if it all had to be secured properly, even for fairly generous values of "properly".
viraptor 5y ago
> So the "attackers" didn't steal anything. It's always a weird phase. A proper one would be "we have no records of data exfiltration, so we hope it didn't happen". Attackers had the access, otherwise the data wouldn't be encrypted. > restore from backup, get upset about losing 25 minutes of data and keep going. Unless you want to be owned again in 30min, you need to first analyse how did it happen the first time and how to mitigate it, before getting everything back online. That takes time. > Why is any of the software that controlls meat-cutting/oil pipeline hardware not air-gapped None of those were affected. The pipeline hack took their billing system down, not the operations. I haven't seen the details here, but it's not like the meat saws and trucks just stopped - more likely the stock/communication/billing system was stopped as well.
wyager 5y ago
They're probably using some insane piece of crap corporate management system written by a Fujitsu subsidiary or something. "Restore from backup" might not be something that's possible for them. It is interesting how many companies end up paying $30M for pre-packaged garbage when they could get something a lot better by hiring a competent IT/developer for a few years at 10% of the cost. I think the biggest impediment is finding the small fraction of people who could actually pull it off; there's a huge opportunity there for anyone who can figure out how to connect top-tier devs to companies who just need to hire one person and don't have the domain expertise to know who/how to hire.
jessaustin 5y ago
One of these "attacks" pops up every three days and I get that if data is exfiltrated then the problem is not the same. Even exfiltration seems less dire in these recent cases than it would in other industries. If anything, beef carcasses seem less likely to require HIPAA or PCI compliance than gasoline deliveries...

worik 5y ago

"How are ransomware "attacks" still a thing ?" It is cheaper to build a shoddy system out of the pre-made parts that software companies sell. A shiny very capable system can be built quickly, and cheaply. To build a robust system, segmented, properly backed up, maintained professionally... costs a lot more. To have staff on your payroll who understand your systems, who can maintain your systems and recover your systems in a disaster means having expensive professionals on the payroll who look like they are doing nothing. When your whole business goes into a paralysis because of the costs you saved, there will be some one to blame. Some clerk in a office that "clicked on a attachment" - it is their fault.... Yes, it is cheaper in the long run to build robust maintained systems. But in the long run we are all dead, and our bonuses will be paid before the catastrophe, and anyway it is "some body else's fault".

handrous 5y ago
I think a lot of the "cost savings" and "efficiency" of sticking everything on computers and putting them online would evaporate if it all had to be secured properly, even for fairly generous values of "properly".

viraptor 5y ago

> So the "attackers" didn't steal anything. It's always a weird phase. A proper one would be "we have no records of data exfiltration, so we hope it didn't happen". Attackers had the access, otherwise the data wouldn't be encrypted. > restore from backup, get upset about losing 25 minutes of data and keep going. Unless you want to be owned again in 30min, you need to first analyse how did it happen the first time and how to mitigate it, before getting everything back online. That takes time. > Why is any of the software that controlls meat-cutting/oil pipeline hardware not air-gapped None of those were affected. The pipeline hack took their billing system down, not the operations. I haven't seen the details here, but it's not like the meat saws and trucks just stopped - more likely the stock/communication/billing system was stopped as well.

wyager 5y ago

They're probably using some insane piece of crap corporate management system written by a Fujitsu subsidiary or something. "Restore from backup" might not be something that's possible for them. It is interesting how many companies end up paying $30M for pre-packaged garbage when they could get something a lot better by hiring a competent IT/developer for a few years at 10% of the cost. I think the biggest impediment is finding the small fraction of people who could actually pull it off; there's a huge opportunity there for anyone who can figure out how to connect top-tier devs to companies who just need to hire one person and don't have the domain expertise to know who/how to hire.

jessaustin 5y ago

One of these "attacks" pops up every three days and I get that if data is exfiltrated then the problem is not the same. Even exfiltration seems less dire in these recent cases than it would in other industries. If anything, beef carcasses seem less likely to require HIPAA or PCI compliance than gasoline deliveries...