An Australian chicken farmer and processor has revealed it was the victim of a cyber attack that has caused serious production disruptions.
Hazeldenes, one of the country’s largest poultry producers, said it had first begun responding to a cyber incident on 19 February.
“Hazeldenes immediately started taking steps to contain the incident, engaged external cyber security experts, and notifying relevant authorities,” a Hazeldenes spokesperson said in a statement provided to Cyber Daily.
The company added that its investigation into the incident is ongoing.
“We are working with partners to restore impacted operations and understand what has happened,” Hazeldenes said.
“Our priority is the welfare of our people, our animals, our customers and our partners, as we work to resume normal operations.
“We apologise for this disruption and any concern it may have caused. If any data has been impacted, we will notify impacted individuals as required.”
While no threat actor has yet come forward to claim responsibility for the hack, businesses reliant on Hazeldenes are already feeling the pinch.
“We knew Thursday that we wouldn’t get our Friday birds, they usually arrive at 2am,” Georgia Polidoros-Gilmour, the manager of meat wholesaler Oroso Poultry, told the ABC on 23 February.
“We then got a call on Friday morning, and we will get an update on Wednesday at 10am.”
Another regional business complained of a lack of communication from the supplier, as a major weekly delivery failed to arrive.
“That’s our big order – including the chicken we supply to local pubs. When we got to work on the weekend, not one box of chicken had arrived,” butcher Nathan Grayling told the national broadcaster.
“There was no notification, no email, nothing to say there wouldn’t be a delivery.”
He added: “We rang around and found that other local supermarkets and butchers in the area also hadn’t received any chicken.”
“We’ve been told there may not be another delivery until later this week, which makes it very difficult to run a business.”
In addition, some Hazeldenes employees described how the situation developed while the attack was underway. According to those reports, there were issues with employee logins as early as last week, and on Thursday – that is, 19 February – the company had shut down its Wi-Fi network at at least one of its sites.
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.