June 10 – After weeks of discussing the Colonial Pipeline hack, the meat industry hack and other ransomware cyber attacks, the phenomenon has hit in our back yard.
Manitowoc, former known as Grove Crane, arguably one of the largest employers in Franklin County, if not the region, announced late yesterday that it has been a victim of a cyber hack.
Earlier in the week the company had been having computer issues and had to shut down on Sunday, which spilled into Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Last night’s announcement explains why.
Attorney Clint Barkdoll, Pat Ryan and Michele Jansen discussed this local cyber attack this morning on First News.
Barkdoll said, “It sounds like it has compromised a great deal of their entire operation. They’re working diligently to restore their systems but it has caused substantial delays and disruptions to their business. It’s not clear when this will be back online but they’ve described it as a cyber security incident that has resulted in a system outage across their company.”
These cyber attacks are a serious, growing problem.
Barkdoll pointed out, “It seems like the last three or four weeks it seems like at least once if not twice a week we’re talking about this issue.”
In fact it came out recently that the meat industry paid $11 million to the cyber hackers so their system could be restored.
Additionally, Cox Communications announced yesterday that a lot of their television and radio stations were hacked and they lost a lot of archival footage.
Barkdoll said, “This is a big, big problem. This very much is hitting home to the extent that this affects thousands and thousands of local families to the extent these are people that now are not being able to work.”
Ryan said, “I bet they would love to see the former Vice President Mike Pence on the Manitowoc property. I bet they would love to see him in action again on this one.”
Jansen added, “We know Joe Biden is meeting with Putin. Do we know any inkling that these latest attacks are also attached to this Russian cyber criminals?”
Barkdoll said, “The press release did not give any insights on where this came from, so that will be something to keep an eye on. We know with Colonial Pipeline and the meat packing company that there were ties to Russia on those. I’m sure this is being looked at very carefully. It looks like Manitowoc did report this to federal authorities so I’m sure it’s being investigated. I would not be surprised if we learn that this is also Russian actors.”
Ryan said, “And this fool in the White House is worried about climate change – that’s the biggest threat to the world. He’s worried about systemic racism—”
“That’s the biggest violent threat to the United States,” Jansen scoffed.
And they “can’t wait to reimagine police departments and defund them,” Ryan concluded.
