Ransomware Attack Hits Major Farm Equipment Manufacturer AGCO

A ransomware attack has disrupted production at AGCO, a major US supplier of farm equipment, including tractors and combines.

The company confirmed the incident today after media in France reported that a cyberattack had hit several AGCO sites in the country on Thursday, including a tractor assembly plant.

The company said: “AGCO is still investigating the scope of the attack, but it is anticipated that its business operations will be negatively affected for several days and potentially longer to fully resume all services, depending on how quickly the company is able to do so. repair your systems. .”

Little else is known, such as what strain of ransomware infected the company’s systems or whether AGCO will pay the ransom. For now, a company spokesman told us he had nothing to add, but said AGCO plans to provide updates.

According to French media, the company became aware of the attack on Thursday morning. The resulting outage made AGCO’s servers inaccessible and forced production to stop at the affected company sites.

The attack risks preventing AGCO from serving its agricultural customers around the world. Last month, the FBI sounded the alarm about how hackers are spreading ransomware to farming groups during planting and growing seasons.

The goal behind the attacks is to pressure farming groups to pay ransom demands, which can involve spending hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. But in the worst case, disruptions could also affect the food supply chain, the FBI has warned. As an example, the agency pointed to an incident in March involving a ransomware attack that hit a “multi-state grain” processing company that also provides seed and fertilizer services.

In response, the FBI provided a list of tips on how agricultural groups can protect themselves from such attacks. They include creating backups, quickly installing the latest software patches, and enabling multi-factor authentication on login systems whenever possible.