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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Is there any other kind of "cyber attack" with respect to companies like this? This is a serious question, I can't imagine someone DDos'ing or trying to "steal passwords" or "private data" from a meat processor. But disrupting their business and holding them hostage? Seems to be a thing these days.

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Sure, you could have an attack whose goal is to cause damage like what happened in the Sony Pictures hack in 2014 [1]. Or follow through on a direct blackmail attempt of money for no disruption. Even if we limit ourselves to financially motivated actors there are plenty of ways to convert business disruption to money other than ransomware such as stock manipulation, competitive sabotage, etc.; they are just a little more sophisticated in the non-technical aspects. However, these tactics are quite rare currently because most hackers are extremely financially unsophisticated, being mostly young technically-minded people, so they focus more on the technical aspect of just doing more hacks rather than the business aspect of extracting the most value through solid financial engineering.

We can see this by the fact that just a few years ago they would take down the same types of companies they are hitting now and ask for a ridiculously low sum of like $10k, but now they are asking for a much more reasonable, but still low $1M. Nothing changed about who they were attacking, they just slowly realized that they underestimated how much companies would pay for their "services" by a factor of 100x. That is a classic mark of a business amateur who has no idea just how much money is involved in B2B deals.

But to your underlying question, yeah, it is probably ransomware.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_hack

In terms of things that are not specifically targeted:

I still see things attacks on open SMTP ports to relay spam email, installing crypto mining software on PCs and servers, scanning for insecure VoIP phone systems and racking up long-distance phone bills..

The ransomware attacks makes a lot of headlines I think because it's somewhat easy to sensationalize without a lot of explanation of boring IT stuff, but there are still plenty of other things happening regularly to compromise insecure systems.

Sure, but those don't typically warrant telling anyone right? I mean "our email server just sent a zillion spam messages, we're working on it." would largely go under the radar I suspect.

The big difference is that ransomware is a strike directly against the people who got hacked, while turning servers into bot farms at worst costs them a little electricity. The victims of DDosSes, for example, aren't usually the ones whose compromised systems are running the DDoS.

1) Cyber warfare. Taking down critical capacity like food production weakens your enemy. I don't think hostilities are anywhere near bad enough with anyone for this to be an issue at this point; but it would not surprise me if the other major countries are already in our systems and could do this with the push of a button if they wanted to. (Similarly, it would not surprise me if we were in theirs as well). Establishing the capacity to do this at the push of a button, could have the effect of accidentally shutting things down. Either because of a mistake from the attacker, or because the attack is discovered and production is shut down out of an abundance of caution while we figure out what happened.

2) Terrorism. Really, I consider this the same as warfare, just coming from "terrorists" instead of "countries". With this broader base of attackers, I think there are groups that would be willing to do so. The only question is if they have the technical know-how. Given how cheap these ransoms can be ($4.4 mill for the pipeline hack), and the fact that a payed randsom probably a good profit margin, in terms of raw funding, these hacks seem within the range of terrorist groups.

All valid if we were at war or there was an active anti-meat terrorist group (I don't consider PETA to be terrorists :-). Just using the process of elimination to guess what is up and "ransomware" is highest on my survey board at the moment. (weak hat tip to Family Feud)

They do not need to be anti-meat. Simply anti-America would suffice.

The most obvious one to me, especially affecting a meat producer, is activism. Disrupting supply chains for meat production could very well drive demand for plant-based alternatives, and if it becomes a cost of doing business, perhaps it would balance out massive subsidies which keep meat prices competitive with prices for plant-based meats.

FWIW, I'm not saying it couldn't have some other motivation, I am saying that it is unlikely.

And now Bloomberg is reporting it was a ransomware attack -- "It’s unclear exactly how many plants globally have been affected by the ransomware attack as Sao Paulo-based JBS has yet to release those details."

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