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Security

Vodka Maker Stoli Says August Ransomware Attack Contributed To Bankruptcy Filing (therecord.media) 35

Posted by msmash from the it-was-a-blurry-day dept.
A ransomware attack on the multinational Stoli Group in August helped push two of the vodka-maker's U.S. subsidiaries into bankruptcy, according to the company's CEO. From a report: In a Texas bankruptcy court filing on November 29, CEO Chris Caldwell attributed a range of external factors to the financial woes of Stoli Group USA and Kentucky Owl (KO) -- which are facing $84 million in debt. But one of the most prominent was a ransomware attack this year that damaged the parent company's IT system.

"In August 2024, the Stoli Group's IT infrastructure suffered severe disruption in the wake of a data breach and ransomware attack," Caldwell said in the filing. "The attack caused substantial operational issues throughout all companies within the Stoli Group, including Stoli USA and KO, due to the Stoli Group's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system being disabled and most of the Stoli Group's internal processes (including accounting functions) being forced into a manual entry mode." Caldwell said the systems will be restored âoeno earlier than in the first quarter of 2025.â

Vodka Maker Stoli Says August Ransomware Attack Contributed To Bankruptcy Filing More | Reply

Vodka Maker Stoli Says August Ransomware Attack Contributed To Bankruptcy Filing

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  • We could just make being a member of a ransomware gang a death-penalty level crime. Internationally.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      We could just make being a member of a ransomware gang a death-penalty level crime. Internationally.

      Russia would never agree to that. They tacitly approve of ransomware attacks on Western companies.

      • "Russia would never agree to that. They tacitly approve of ransomware attacks on Western companies."

        There's nothing tacit about it. Russia has been engaged in 24/7 electronic war on Western civilization for at least a decade. We just live in la-la-land, and pretend to defend against it with one hand while the other jerks off.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HBI ( 10338492 )

          The real solution is the disconnection of internet connections for large swathes of the world. Basically, if you can't get an extradition agreement going with that country, you can't allow them to connect with you. You'd be surprised how easy that kind of alteration of the paradigm might go.

          • Or just don't connect critical domestic infrastructure to the internet in the first place. I'm pretty sure we were making vodka before there were computers.

          • "The real solution is the disconnection of internet connections for large swathes of the world. Basically, if you can't get an extradition agreement going with that country, you can't allow them to connect with you. You'd be surprised how easy that kind of alteration of the paradigm might go."

            Sounds good to me. Why the actual fuck do we have active Russian domains when we know for a fact that all of them are just rogue state agents and the people of Russia are largely blocked by their captors in Moscow?

      • Why should we care what they think? If it were serious enough our own government operatives would already be willing to kill them. If we didn't want to risk our own people, just put a reward out for anyone who does kill them and take advantage of Russia's own tolerance of criminal elements to combat the parts of it we don't like.

        If a country doesn't want others doing that in their own country, it rather incentivizes them to address the problem. If they don't want to, then why should we care what they hav

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And here is another: The death-penalty has provably not preventative effect. Ever wondered why there are significantly more murders in death-penalty states?

      Al your cave-man approach would do is make matters _worse_.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Moryath ( 553296 )
        100% of those who have received the death penalty haven't repeated their crime after.
        • 100% of those who have received the death penalty haven't repeated their crime after.
          While obviously true, the criminalization of acts has a cost (investigation, court, prison ...) while proven to be very ineffective in deterrence.
          On the other side prevention has been proven to have a much larger effect on deterrence and has usually side benefits: for example poverty has probably the highest correlation with crime rate, while reducing poverty has obvious side-benefits (unless you are a sociopath).
          Even,
          • The problem we do try to alleviate those things yet crime persists. Some people don't want to work, or they're strung out on jobs, or they enjoy crime. One thing we know is certain, openly broadcasting that we won't prosecute minor crimes and defunding police really made the problem a lot worse.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You do not know what "prevention" means. How pathetic.

        • Especially the 40% of the executed who were wrongly convicted.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Moryath ( 553296 )

        Ever wondered why there are significantly more murders in death-penalty states?

        You know? What the heck, it's worth a review. You're implying that the ONE factor is whether the death penalty is actively available on the state level.

        The states that have active death penalty processes are: Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and Indiana.

        Let's look for some possible confounding vari

      • And here is another: The death-penalty has provably not preventative effect. Ever wondered why there are significantly more murders in death-penalty states?

        Al your cave-man approach would do is make matters _worse_.

        ??? wrong thread?

    • More effective to make it death penalty for hosting critical information on systems which aren't patched for known vulnerabilities or using default/weak passwords.

      Name a randsomeware or major breach which used a zeroday...

    • Do you think it's true or just a useful excuse for the poor business performance ?
    • You have to catch them first. How about just disconnecting the country they are operating in from the rest of the world.
  • You either buy new computers with Windows 11 in 2025, or your unsupported Windows 10 computers will get exploited and you lose money to ransomware anyway. And we will keep bribing companies like Adobe not to support that Penguin OS.

  • Poor decision-making* (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @02:12PM (#64990911)

    Ransomware attacks are merely a symptom of poor decision-making. If you're filing for bankruptcy then it's clear that not inventing in good security or a solid DRP was merely one of the many poor decisions that the executives made.

    • investing* (not inventing)

    • Could be their DRP was actually scheduled to take 8 months to affect. And they are on schedule... :/ (not holding my breath for that one)

      I guess cyber insurance wasn't a thing... and if this is how bad their operations were... this was inevitable. Sucks for all the people loosing jobs... hopefully, their operation will be taken over by someone that knows what they are doing.

  • An easy excuse... contributes vs causes (Score:5, Informative)

    by SlashTex ( 10502574 ) on Wednesday December 04, 2024 @02:17PM (#64990921)
    I have no way of knowing the truth on this. But, this could be an easy excuse for bad management. https://growjo.com/company/Sto... [growjo.com] says estimated revenue is $15M. Stoli debt per OP is $84M. Companies that have a debt to revenue ratio of 40% are usually in trouble. Being on the north side of 600% indicates years of trouble.

    Lot easier to look for help if you can lay it on ransomware instead of bad management.

    • Probably this. If a company can't turn a profit selling booze, something is clearly wrong with how the business is being run. It's not as if the entire world suddenly went teetotaler. Alcohol is one of those things there's always demand for, to screw that up would be like bankrupting a casino *wink*.

  • Just hire a cracking crew from some shit country to find any exploit at all and send you a ransom email, suddenly you're off the hook for your cooked books.

  • I don't think I've drunk any vodka in this millenium, but back in the 1980s I hit the clubs pretty often and I was particularly fond of Stoli bloody marys. (That is, if they were made right, with horseradish, pepper and each bartender had their secret ingredients). Anyway, what I learned via a lot of trial and error, was that stoli vodka was the only hardstuff (I didn't just drink vodka) that didn't give me a hangover the next day. And that included other vodkas.

    • I don't think I've drunk any vodka in this millenium, but back in the 1980s I hit the clubs pretty often and I was particularly fond of Stoli bloody marys. (That is, if they were made right, with horseradish, pepper and each bartender had their secret ingredients). Anyway, what I learned via a lot of trial and error, was that stoli vodka was the only hardstuff (I didn't just drink vodka) that didn't give me a hangover the next day. And that included other vodkas.

      Stoli didn't give you a hangover and other vodkas did? Opposite of my experience. The only vodka that hit me worse the next day was Titos corn vodka.

      I do miss bloody marys. Horseradish, lemon juice, good tomato juice, healthy dose of tabasco and some celery salt with ground dried jalapeno on the rim. Mmm.

  • That's a weird way to say "I underinvested in IT and security."

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