The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has stated that a cyber-criminal group with links to Russia is responsible for the recent ransomware attack against JBS, the world’s largest meat supplier.
The agency said it has identified REvil – also known as Sodinokibi – as the author of the breach, which JBS revealed had compromised servers for its North American and Australian facilities, leading to operations being shut down in the US, Canada and Australia.
“We have attributed the JBS attack to REvil and Sodinokibi and are working diligently to bring the threat actors to justice,” the FBI said in a statement. “We continue to focus our efforts on imposing risk and consequences and holding the responsible cyber actors accountable.”
FBI echoes The White House
The statement echoes the sentiments from The White House this week, which announced that US President Joe Biden intends to address the ongoing issue of cyber-attacks with President Vladimir Putin when the pair of them meet in two weeks.
The White House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not harbour ransomware criminals,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.
JBS for its part has said that meat-processing factories in the US were coming back online yesterday. It did not, however, reveal whether or not it paid the ransomware demand to the hackers responsible.