The brewery’s bottling operations at Vel Moortgat Brewery were affected by a ransomware attack late last night, halting the company’s beer production.
Belgian beers are renowned for their strong, fruity golden pale ale, which bears the same name. Additionally, the brewery produces other well-known abbey beers, including Vedett, Maredsous, and La Chouffe, which are renowned internationally.
A company spokesperson earlier today informed local media that the company’s automated threat detection systems had detected the ransomware attack.
According to Ellen Aarts, communications manager at Duvel Moortgat,” Alarms went off in Duvel’s IT department last night at 1: 30 AM because ransomware was discovered.”
Production was immediately stopped as a result. When it might restart is unknown at this time. The company’s spokeswoman added that” we hope to restart today or tomorrow.”
Aarts added that their warehouses are stocked, so there should n’t be any impact on distribution, despite not having an estimate for when production operations will resume.
To make up for this production halt, we have more than enough beer on hand. – Duvel
Beer enthusiasts on Reddit asked for the actual number of” strategic reserves” in a humorous response to the incident, calling it a “national emergency.”
If production takes a long time to return to normal, others expressed concern and frustration over potential price increases for specific Duvel beers.
The brewery did not specify whether the cyberattack had an impact on Duvel’s Breendock brewery’s production only or on other Antwerp, Oudenaarde, and Achouffe plants.
At the time of writing, no ransomware gangs have claimed responsibility for the Duvel attack.
BleepingComputer reached out to Duvel inquiring about the attack, but a comment was not immediately made available.
The main result of Duvel’s situation is the interruption of its brewing operations, despite the fact that ransomware attacks frequently target data theft for extortion. There is currently no information about the company data impact caused by the attack.
Update 3/7: According to the Stormous ransomware group, who claim to have 88 GB of data stolen from the brewery’s systems and threaten to leak it if a ransom is n’t paid by March 25, 2024, the attack on Duvel was carried out.