Meat supplier JBS paid $11 million ransom following cyberattack

A JBS facility.
(Image credit: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

JBS, the world's largest meat supplier, announced on Wednesday that after consulting with its tech team and outside cybersecurity experts, it paid an $11 million ransom to hackers to ensure that none of the company's data was stolen.

"It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers," JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira told The Wall Street Journal. Nogueira learned that JBS was the target of a cyberattack on May 30, when hackers demanded the company pay a ransom in order to reclaim access to its computer system. JBS temporarily suspended operations at nine of its beef processing plants in the United States, in order to slow down the attack.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.