How hackers forced brewing giant Asahi back to pen and paper (BBC)

[Grey Havoc]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly64g5y744o

Only four bottles of Asahi Super Dry beer are left on the shelves of Ben Thai, a cosy restaurant in the Tokyo suburb of Sengawacho.

Its owner, Sakaolath Sugizaki, expects to get a few more soon, but she says her supplier is keeping the bulk of its stock for bigger customers.

That's because Asahi, the maker of Japan's best-selling beer, was forced to halt production at most of its 30 factories in the country at the end of last month after being hit by a cyber-attack.

While all of its facilities in Japan - including six breweries - have now partially reopened, its computer systems are still down.

That means it has to process orders and shipments manually - using pen, paper and fax machines - resulting in much fewer shipments than before the attack.

Asahi accounts for about 40% of Japan's beer market, so its problems are having a major impact on bars, restaurants and retailers.

 

[publiusr]

All companies should have similar back up plans. They need to stick with pen and paper.

 

[Apophenia]

... They need to stick with pen and paper.

Or, alternatively, larger-scale organizations - corporate and governmental - stop being so lazy. For that is what wholesale exposure to the internet represents.

In this case, why was Asahi's brewing activities in any way exposed to a cyber attack? The sales and billing departments? Sure. But most of the rest of the business activity could be performed through an intranet - thus firewalled and immune to outside interference.

 

[publiusr]

Power plants should have no internet connection—all by hand.

Let Stuxnet hack that.

 

[Apophenia]

Power plants should have no internet connection—all by hand.
.

How would that work? Peaker and load-following power plants rely on real-time data.

My point about using intranets was that all sensitive information - ie: that relating to the actual power-generating equipement - could be 'quarantined' on that private network. This doesn't mean that lower-value systems connected to the internet can't be hacked. But recovery from cyber attacks would be limited to those few exposed systems.

 

[Hydroman]

They hacked and converted Asahi to Budweiser, oh the humanity of it all!