Australian Information Security Incident Reported: February 27 2020

Australian Cyber Attack February 2020: Australian wool sales stopped by ransomware attack

“Wool sales across Australia have been halted after Talman, a major software supplier to the industry, was hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted its production databases.”

Source: Australian wool sales stopped by ransomware attack | iTnews
Source: Wool auctions re-scheduled as cyber attack impact hits | Sheep Central
More reports from: iTnews.

AWEX’s (Australian Wool Exchange) National Auction Selling Committee, David Cother told the industry at 2pm today that Talman advised operational access is not available to subscribers/clients of the OZDE EDI Network or ASP Services.

“As such auctions for Wednesday 26 February in all regions have been re-scheduled.”

Chief executive officer of the Ozdocs/Talman Group, Dr Pramod Pandey, this morning said everyone in the group is busy “firefighting” to restore services to the industry after the cyber attack.

“The reality is we are under attack, we are attacked,” he said.

“[The attackers] encrypted certain database files, so that makes the whole system inoperative.

“Instead of trying to reinstate our backup [on the existing infrastructure] … we started resurrecting it [on] new infrastructure.

“In other words we moved it to a different data centre altogether for the time being, before we get into the investigation of what actually happened.”