Tag Archive for: cooperative

After ransomware attack, company finds 650+ breached credentials from NEW Cooperative CEO, employees


Digital identity management firm FYEO says it has discovered hundreds of instances of breached credentials from employees of NEW Cooperative, the Iowa-based farm service provider hit with a ransomware attack in recent days. 

Tammy Kahn, COO of FYEO, told ZDNet that when researchers searched through the company’s database, they found 653 instances of breached credentials connected to NEW Cooperative.

The password “chicken1” was common among the company’s 120 employees and was used over 10 times.

Kahn added that the firm’s CEO Brent Bunte appeared to have the second highest number of instances of breached credentials while other current executives also had passwords that had been leaked. 

NEW Cooperative did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“The NewCoop ransomware situation is concerning for a number of reasons, the first being that hackers are still going after critical infrastructure and seeking to disrupt supply chains even when explicitly stating otherwise. Beyond that, it’s indicative of a larger problem: password management,” Kahn said. 

“We saw that the Colonial Pipeline breach was ultimately a result of a bad password, and it’s likely a similar case here. A majority of internet users and the companies they work for are likely sitting ducks for hackers as they have a limited number of stale passwords and believe someone else should take responsibility for cybersecurity.”

FYEO built an active domain intelligence database of over 20 billion leaked credentials and passwords, offering alerts any time email addresses and passwords resulting from third party breaches appear on the darknet. 

By running the newcoop.com domain through the database, they found the 653 instances of credentials that have previously been exposed.

Dozens of studies — and previous ransomware incidents or breaches — have shown that leaked passwords are one of the easiest ways cyberattackers routinely gain access to systems. The problem has gotten so bad that some companies, like Microsoft, are doing away with passwords altogether. 

“Until organizations find ways to empower their employees to…

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Major agriculture group New Cooperative hit by ransomware attack


Agriculture group New Cooperative group was hit by a ransomware attack over the weekend, potentially endangering operations of a company key to the agricultural supply chain.

A spokesperson for New Cooperative confirmed the attack to The Hill on Monday, noting in a statement that the company “recently identified a cybersecurity incident that is impacting some of our company’s devices and systems.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline to contain the threat, and we can confirm it has been successfully contained,” the spokesperson said. “We also quickly notified law enforcement and are working closely with data security experts to investigate and remediate the situation.”

Iowa-based New Cooperative is among the larger U.S. farm cooperatives, and according to Bloomberg News received a ransom demand of $5.9 million from cybercriminal group BlackMatter. 

“Please know that NEW Cooperative is treating this matter with the utmost seriousness, and we are using every available tool and resource to quickly restore our systems,” the company spokesperson told The Hill. “We appreciate the patience of our valued customers as we investigate this matter and work to restore functionality and will share additional information directly with our customers as we learn it.”

In what are thought to be screenshots of a negotiation between a spokesperson for New Cooperative and the hackers tweeted out by security researchers, New Cooperative noted that 40 percent of the nation’s grain production runs through its software, and that the ransomware attack would “break the supply chain very shortly” if the hackers did not relent. 

A spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the key federal agency tasked with securing critical U.S. infrastructure, declined to comment in favor of comments from New Cooperative. 

Allan Liska, a senior intelligence analyst at cybersecurity group Recorded Future, was among security professionals tracking the ransomware attack Monday, telling The Hill that it was still unclear how far-reaching the attack might be. 

“New Coop is the 51st largest farm cooperative in the US, so there may be regional…

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9/11, A Decade Later — Forging bonds and benefits from cooperative training between military and non-military federal, state and local law enforcement

Carl White

Top Priority Sector: 
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Carl White

For many years, concerns about crossing the boundaries imposed by the Posse Comitatus Act impeded U.S. military relationships with non-Department of Defense law enforcement agencies. The act was created in the 1800’s to limit the federal government’s power to use the military for law enforcement.

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Businesses encouraged to consider dealing with H1N1 – Louisville Courier-Journal

With H1N1 flu sickening people across the state, East Kentucky Power Cooperative in Winchester aims to keep its workforce well. The 650-employee company, highlighted during an H1N1 Pandemic Summit held by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Friday …

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