Another Russian dairy company reportedly disrupted by cyberattack

A cyberattack has snarled logistics and accounting operations at a dairy producer in Russia's republic of Bashkortostan, forcing the company to process shipments and paperwork manually, according to local media.

The attack affected the IT systems of Ufagormolzavod, a manufacturer based in Ufa, the regional capital, but did not interrupt production, the company's chief executive, Ildar Faizullin, said.

"Production has not stopped. Only the processing of documents and shipments has slowed down. The entire workforce has been mobilized to keep operations running," he added.

Founded in 2015, the company produces kefir, sour cream, cottage cheese, butter and yogurt under its Molochny Fermer ("Milk Farmer") and Molochnaya Krepost ("Milk Fortress") brands.

The company did not disclose who was behind the attack, whether any data had been compromised, or when it expects to restore its IT systems.

The incident is the latest in a series of cyber disruptions affecting Russia's dairy sector. 

Earlier this week, attackers compromised the website of Molochnaya Kukhnya ("Dairy Kitchen"), a state-run producer of dairy products for children and pregnant women in Bashkortostan. The intruders posted fabricated claims that production facilities were experiencing widespread power outages and that the company's products had been contaminated with dangerous bacteria. 

It is not known whether the two incidents are connected.

Other high-profile cyberattacks against the industry include one from June last year that disrupted the country's electronic veterinary certification system, forcing dairy producers and suppliers to revert to paper documentation. The outage caused widespread logistical bottlenecks as regional distribution centers refused shipments that lacked digital certificates, leading to supply interruptions at major retailers.

In December, the Semyonishna dairy processing plant in southern Siberia was hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted its systems with a variant of LockBit ransomware.

Earlier, in September 2024, ransomware operators targeted Kabosh, one of Russia's largest cheese producers, leaving the company's production facilities unable to operate for nearly a month.