Swiss cow dies after cyber attack

Mad cow disease Swiss cow dies after cyber attack

2024-08-13 Source: MSN | Translated by AI 1 min Reading Time

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In Switzerland, unknown individuals hacked a milking robot. The farmer subsequently lost control over the health condition of his cow, which did not survive the cyber attack.

Even farms are not immune to cyber attacks, as has now been demonstrated. Because a cow in Switzerland fell victim to a hacking attack on the milking robot. Here more about it ...(Image: Forest peace) — Even farms are not immune to cyber attacks, as has now been demonstrated. Because a cow in Switzerland fell victim to a hacking attack on the milking robot. Here more about it ...
(Image: Forest peace)

A farmer from Hagendorn near Cham in the canton of Zug in Switzerland has fallen victim to a cyberattack in which unknown culprits hacked his milking robot. The cyber criminals then encrypted the stored data. The criminals ultimately demanded a ransom of 10,000 dollars for the decryption of the data. However, because the farmer did not pay, he lost access to important information. As a result, he had to euthanize one of his pregnant cows due to complications related to pregnancy. The financial damage is estimated at about 6,400 euros. To this day, it is unclear who is behind this cyberattack.

Sometimes no networking is better after all

The encrypted data included, among other things, information about the cows' pregnancies. The farmer told the Luzerner Zeitung that the animal might still be alive if he had been able to read the exact insemination date from the milking robot. As a result, the hack directly led to the cow's death. About 70 cows live on the farmer's farm. Due to the fact that certain parts of the milking system still worked without a computer, the farmer was still able to milk. This apparently prevented worse effects of the cyberattack. With the help of an old version of the software, the farmer was able to recover some of the lost data. A milking robot is an automated machine that takes over the milking process in cows. Such robots capture and store important data about the animals, such as milk yield, health status, and pregnancy information.

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