A farm in Switzerland suffered a ransomware attack on its automated milking system, resulting in the loss of cow health data and the death of an animal.
When Vital Bircher, a farmer in Hagendorn, Switzerland, experienced the attack, he initially thought it was a simple outage that left him unable to access his animals’ milking data.
Soon, however, the manufacturer of the milking system informed him that he had been breached and that the hackers had managed to unlock Bircher’s data with a ransomware component, and were now demanding the equivalent of $10,000 to decrypt it.
Bircher initially considered agreeing to the ransom demand, but decided against it, believing that the business could continue to operate without the milk production data. In addition, the milking robots themselves could operate without computers or network connections in the event of a power outage, so the animals could continue to be milked.
Extortion attempt failed
The system also provided the farmer with updates on the health and other vital signs of the animals, which is especially helpful during pregnancy.
It also turned out that one cow had a calf that died in utero, and the emergency was not detected in time because the system was down during the attack.
– We tried everything to save the mother, but in the end we had to put her down, says Bircher.
The farmer estimates that the cyberattack cost him about 6,000 Swiss francs – mostly in veterinary costs and the purchase of a new computer. The hackers didn’t get any money either, and the extortion attempt failed.
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