Queensland-based food supplier Royal Foods has confirmed it is responding to a cyber security incident after being listed as a victim of the ransomware group The Gentlemen.
The company was listed by the hackers in a 7 July leak post, with a deadline to publication of less than six days.
The Gentlemen shared no other details regarding the data allegedly breached, nor its volume. However, Cyber Daily has confirmed the incident with a Royal Foods spokesperson.
“Royal Foods is investigating a recent incident in which an unauthorised third party accessed elements of our internal IT environment associated with administrative functions,” the spokesperson said.
“As soon as we became aware of this incident, we enacted our incident response plan and began work to ensure the security of our systems and determine what happened. We are engaging with external IT and cyber security experts to assist with our response to the incident.”
Royal Foods said it had isolated the intrusion and was checking for further activity across its network.
“We have now become aware of some online activity involving the company being named online alongside indications that they have possession of some data relating to Royal Foods,” the spokesperson said.
“We would like to assure our stakeholders that we are investigating this activity as a priority. If we detect that personal or confidential information was involved in this incident, we will contact impacted parties as required to provide support and guidance.
“We have notified the relevant authorities, including the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC). We are also working with experts from across the cyber security industry and have sophisticated monitoring in place to detect any developments.”
Who is The Gentlemen?
While only relatively new to the ransomware scene, The Gentlemen has risen to the number two spot when it comes to victim count, behind the Qilin ransomware operation. Its most recent Australian victim was Mackay Sugar, whose operations were seriously disrupted for several days following the cyber attack.
The Gentlemen is thought to be Russian speakers and operate under a ransomware-as-a-service model, with the hackers currently on an affiliate recruitment drive, while also operating in partnership with a popular hacking forum.
“We are proud to announce that The Gentlemen are becoming official partners of BreachForums. Together, we are opening the doors to one of the most advanced Ransomware-as-a-Service operations in the scene,” the hackers recently said.
“We are actively looking for skilled affiliates – teams, individual pentesters, and access brokers – to join our program and scale operations worldwide.”
Affiliates keep 90 per cent of any ransom paid.
Who is Royal Foods?
Headquartered in the Brisbane suburb of Hemmant, Royal Foods also has offices in NSW, Victoria, and Western Australia.
The company provides gourmet food products to both retailers and the food service sector, and employs more than 200 people.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make Cyber Daily a preferred news source on Google.
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.