Crystal Valley Farm Coop Hit with Ransomware

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Crystal Valley, a Minnesota-based farm supply and grain marketing cooperative, has become the second U.S. agriculture business to be hit with a ransomware attack this week.
 
The company released a statement about the attack on its website on Tuesday afternoon, but as of Wednesday afternoon, the site had been knocked offline and was still down.
 
Crystal Valley confirmed in a Facebook post that it had been alerted to the attack on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 19.
“Crystal Valley has been targeted in a ransomware attack. The attack has infected our … computer systems and interrupted the daily operations of our company,” according to the Facebook post.
 
The cooperative said that the attack has shut down its payment systems. It can’t presently accept Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cards at its cardtrols “until further notice,” although “local cards do work.” Cardtrols are devices that give authorized holders access to a fuel dealer’s unattended pumps or other dispensers for gasoline or special fuels.
 
As of Wednesday, there was no news of which ransomware strain infected the coop, nor of how much extortion was being demanded. Threatpost reached out to Crystal Valley to find out and will update this article once we hear back.

Read more: Crystal Valley Farm Coop Hit with Ransomware | Threatpost