In the first instance of its kind, the Changhua County Meat Market Co’s computer system was disabled by a cyberattack on Monday, preventing more than 1,000 pigs from being auctioned that day, the Changhua County Government said on Tuesday.
The company’s computers were completely inoperable on Monday after a cyberattack resulted in the computers' files being encrypted, but the computers were restored to normal operation on Tuesday, company chairman Hung Jung-chang (洪榮章) told the Central News Agency on Tuesday.
Photo courtesy of Changhua County Meat Market via CNA
“After the system went down the computer displayed a ransom note demanding payment to decrypt the files,” he said. “We decided to suspend the auction and have someone come to fix the computers.”
The software was developed by Academia Sinica, and the company had no problems with it in the past, he said, adding that yesterday was the first time the Changhua Meat Market was closed due to a hacker attack on the auction computer system.
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