Cybercrime

Dairy Giant Lactalis Targeted by Hackers

France-based dairy giant Lactalis revealed last week that it was targeted by hackers, but claimed that it had found no evidence of a data breach.

The company said a malicious third party attempted to breach its computer network, but it immediately took action to contain the attack. This included restricting access to public resources.

Eduard Kovacs

March 2, 2021

France-based dairy giant Lactalis revealed last week that it was targeted by hackers, but claimed that it had found no evidence of a data breach.

The company said a malicious third party attempted to breach its computer network, but it immediately took action to contain the attack. This included restricting access to public resources.

Authorities have been notified and Lactalis’ IT team has been working with external cybersecurity experts to investigate the incident. However, the company said it did not appear that any data was compromised.

SecurityWeek has reached out to Lactalis for more information and will update this article if the company responds.

Based on the limited information made public by the company, this could be a ransomware attack conducted by a threat actor that — in addition to encrypting files on the compromised network — steals potentially sensitive files and threatens to leak them unless a ransom is paid.

Lactalis is one of the largest dairy product groups in the world, delivering more than 2,000 types of products — including famous brands such as Président and Galbani — to more than 100 countries. The company employs roughly 85,000 people and has operations in over 50 countries.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

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