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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. This week, we followed the story of JBS,
the second largest producer of beef, pork, and chicken, who
is now fully operational after being the victim of a
ransomware attack by a Russian group named Our Evil. Luckily,
the disruption to the food supply will be minimal, but
workers going back how to put in some good old
(00:49):
fashioned manual labor as many of the operations that these
plants are automated. For more on this latest ransomware attack
on critical sectors of the US economy, will speak to
Elizabeth Elkin, ag cultural reporter at Bloomberg News. At least
some plants, we've heard we're doing operations manually and so
that means that logistical labor like packaging and accounting for
(01:10):
cattle could be a challenge. One union wright told me
that he'd compare it to driving manual while you're ramping
up to get the car back into full auto. Right.
Everything from like knife sharpening to production line speed all
rely heavily on automation for their controls, and so with
a cyber attack like this, like that can be a
(01:30):
huge challenge. And you know, we saw all of their
beef plants in the US had to shut down on Tuesday,
and which is just huge, right, like you said, I mean,
they're a huge producer of meat, at the largest meat
producer globally, and they supply almost a quarter of American
beef supplies, So that is I mean, it's huge, and
it's a lot of work. You know, the extent of
(01:52):
these outages and how much it's going to affect them,
we probably won't know. They're probably GBS is probably not
going to disclose all of that, but some of the
workers are returning where you know, there was concerns about
meat sitting in freezes for too long it could render
it inedible. So we don't know exactly what has been
lost in the last few days that they had been closed. No, no,
we don't. And you know, if you think about this
(02:15):
on a larger scale, right, we had huge closures during COVID,
and if you compare that to this, this is a
pretty small blip, right compared to like COVID closures, but
it still was. It was big, and it's you know,
big that this humongous meat company had to shut down
over this. Yeah, the prices of meat have been impacted,
(02:36):
you know, a little bit. We'll see how much, you know,
the after effects will have to kind of wait and see,
but so far the prices have been affected a little bit.
More on the actual ransomware attack itself, the FBI has
said that it's been attributed to a Russian speaking gang
Are Evil, pretty sinister name there um. But what else
(02:56):
do we know about this? We don't know if JBS
paid a and some how much that might have been.
You know, what do we know about that attacks specifically?
We don't know a lot, which has been I think
frustrating for a lot of people. Gibs has been pretty
quiet about updates and we again asked them for any
updates that that might have today and haven't received any.
(03:17):
We're we're in a waiting game. We like you said,
we don't know whether they paid the ransom. We don't
know really any details about that beyond just that the
FBI has come out and confirmed that it was this
Russia linked group. I think in this case, some of
the backup servers were not affected. That's kind of how
they were able to get back up so quickly, thankfully, right.
(03:39):
I think some reporting I saw said back in October
there was a representative from this gang are Evil who
said that the agriculture sector would now be a main
target for them. And obviously we see that now and
we saw with the Colonial pipeline hack. Bigger infrastructure areas
are being targets for this ransomware attacks, and that's the
concern that they had. Attacks like this will grow, and
(04:01):
really the cybersecurity set up in a lot of these
companies just isn't up to protecting themselves from these attacks.
This really up ended the agriculture markets and it did
raise a lot of concerns about food security. We're seeing,
like you said, increasing targets of this critical infrastructure. And yeah,
hostel meat prices are at the highest level since the
(04:21):
early days in the pandemic last year, cattle futures swung wildly.
This is really a concern, and the White House did
come out and say that corporate leaders should immediately developed
plants to try to counter these attacks, like offline backups
to a critical information And there are no Department of
Agriculture cybersecurity regulations or requirements for meat packers we've discovered.
(04:46):
What are we hearing from employees? I know JBS said
that there wasn't evidence that any customers or supplier worker
data had been leaked, but that's always the concern when
servers and things are attacked like that. Absolutely, and we've
been hearing a lot from employees that they are really
concerned about this. And I mean, if you were in
(05:06):
play there, I am sure that this would be a
concern for you to We're hearing, you know, about some
of those challenges that people have faced as they go in,
Like we discussed some of the things that are having
to be done manually that usually wouldn't be Now most
of the plants are back up and running pretty good capacity.
I don't know that we have been in touch with
(05:28):
like unions looking at you know, as they're trying to
get people back in the door here, like, what does
that look like? There's some concern, but also pretty much
everyone who I've spoken with thinks that, you know, JBS
will be able to come back up to full capacity
of doing all of the things that they usually do,
and other companies have kind of been encouraged to come
(05:50):
in and help fill this gap. Elizabeth Elkin, agricultural reporter
at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks again for having me. The housing market in the
country continues to be as crazy as ever, with low
inventory and sky high prices, but thousands of homes known
as whisper listings or pocket listings, are being reserved for
(06:13):
certain buyers and it's squeezing the supply even tighter. In
some cases, brokers may show an unlisted home to a
small circle of buyers before publicly advertising that listing. This
all just means that the dwindling options for home buyers continues.
For more on all of this, will speak to Nicole Friedman,
housing reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Normally, to buy
or sell a home, the seller will list their house publicly,
(06:36):
so they'll put it on multiple listing service kind of
a local database that has all of the house listings
and then from there it will go on to you know, Zillo,
Reds and realtor dot com, all of these websites so
that any buyer can see the home. They're also being
a for sale sign out front, lots of marketing, and
the idea is to get you know, as many buyers
as possible who want to tour the home and make offers.
(06:56):
And especially in this market, it is super competitive out
there for buyers. Buyers are desperate to buy homes and
there just aren't enough on the market. So any home
that does go on the market these days is likely
to sell very quickly and get multiple offers. But in
some cases, brokeragees are not putting listings on those public databases,
(07:17):
but they're keeping them kind of in house. It's called
an office exclusive, also called a pocket listing, where a
brokerage might have a house that they only market to
other agents inside that brokerage. And there are various reasons
that sellers might want to do this. It's a little
bit more common in high end markets. If a seller is,
say a celebrity or somebody who has a lot of
(07:38):
privacy or safety concerns, they might not want all of
these people touring their house, they might not want photos
of their house on the internet, So sometimes sellers prefer
these kind of more private listing options, and that means
that the house is kind of only advertised within a
certain brokerage and so only clients of that brokerage get
access to these listings. So what that also means is
(07:58):
that a buyer who is looking for a house to
buy in
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. This week, we followed the story of JBS,
the second largest producer of beef, pork, and chicken, who
is now fully operational after being the victim of a
ransomware attack by a Russian group named Our Evil. Luckily,
the disruption to the food supply will be minimal, but
workers going back how to put in some good old
(00:49):
fashioned manual labor as many of the operations that these
plants are automated. For more on this latest ransomware attack
on critical sectors of the US economy, will speak to
Elizabeth Elkin, ag cultural reporter at Bloomberg News. At least
some plants, we've heard we're doing operations manually and so
that means that logistical labor like packaging and accounting for
(01:10):
cattle could be a challenge. One union wright told me
that he'd compare it to driving manual while you're ramping
up to get the car back into full auto. Right.
Everything from like knife sharpening to production line speed all
rely heavily on automation for their controls, and so with
a cyber attack like this, like that can be a
(01:30):
huge challenge. And you know, we saw all of their
beef plants in the US had to shut down on Tuesday,
and which is just huge, right, like you said, I mean,
they're a huge producer of meat, at the largest meat
producer globally, and they supply almost a quarter of American
beef supplies, So that is I mean, it's huge, and
it's a lot of work. You know, the extent of
(01:52):
these outages and how much it's going to affect them,
we probably won't know. They're probably GBS is probably not
going to disclose all of that, but some of the
workers are returning where you know, there was concerns about
meat sitting in freezes for too long it could render
it inedible. So we don't know exactly what has been
lost in the last few days that they had been closed. No, no,
we don't. And you know, if you think about this
(02:15):
on a larger scale, right, we had huge closures during COVID,
and if you compare that to this, this is a
pretty small blip, right compared to like COVID closures, but
it still was. It was big, and it's you know,
big that this humongous meat company had to shut down
over this. Yeah, the prices of meat have been impacted,
(02:36):
you know, a little bit. We'll see how much, you know,
the after effects will have to kind of wait and see,
but so far the prices have been affected a little bit.
More on the actual ransomware attack itself, the FBI has
said that it's been attributed to a Russian speaking gang
Are Evil, pretty sinister name there um. But what else
(02:56):
do we know about this? We don't know if JBS
paid a and some how much that might have been.
You know, what do we know about that attacks specifically?
We don't know a lot, which has been I think
frustrating for a lot of people. Gibs has been pretty
quiet about updates and we again asked them for any
updates that that might have today and haven't received any.
(03:17):
We're we're in a waiting game. We like you said,
we don't know whether they paid the ransom. We don't
know really any details about that beyond just that the
FBI has come out and confirmed that it was this
Russia linked group. I think in this case, some of
the backup servers were not affected. That's kind of how
they were able to get back up so quickly, thankfully, right.
(03:39):
I think some reporting I saw said back in October
there was a representative from this gang are Evil who
said that the agriculture sector would now be a main
target for them. And obviously we see that now and
we saw with the Colonial pipeline hack. Bigger infrastructure areas
are being targets for this ransomware attacks, and that's the
concern that they had. Attacks like this will grow, and
(04:01):
really the cybersecurity set up in a lot of these
companies just isn't up to protecting themselves from these attacks.
This really up ended the agriculture markets and it did
raise a lot of concerns about food security. We're seeing,
like you said, increasing targets of this critical infrastructure. And yeah,
hostel meat prices are at the highest level since the
(04:21):
early days in the pandemic last year, cattle futures swung wildly.
This is really a concern, and the White House did
come out and say that corporate leaders should immediately developed
plants to try to counter these attacks, like offline backups
to a critical information And there are no Department of
Agriculture cybersecurity regulations or requirements for meat packers we've discovered.
(04:46):
What are we hearing from employees? I know JBS said
that there wasn't evidence that any customers or supplier worker
data had been leaked, but that's always the concern when
servers and things are attacked like that. Absolutely, and we've
been hearing a lot from employees that they are really
concerned about this. And I mean, if you were in
(05:06):
play there, I am sure that this would be a
concern for you to We're hearing, you know, about some
of those challenges that people have faced as they go in,
Like we discussed some of the things that are having
to be done manually that usually wouldn't be Now most
of the plants are back up and running pretty good capacity.
I don't know that we have been in touch with
(05:28):
like unions looking at you know, as they're trying to
get people back in the door here, like, what does
that look like? There's some concern, but also pretty much
everyone who I've spoken with thinks that, you know, JBS
will be able to come back up to full capacity
of doing all of the things that they usually do,
and other companies have kind of been encouraged to come
(05:50):
in and help fill this gap. Elizabeth Elkin, agricultural reporter
at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thanks again for having me. The housing market in the
country continues to be as crazy as ever, with low
inventory and sky high prices, but thousands of homes known
as whisper listings or pocket listings, are being reserved for
(06:13):
certain buyers and it's squeezing the supply even tighter. In
some cases, brokers may show an unlisted home to a
small circle of buyers before publicly advertising that listing. This
all just means that the dwindling options for home buyers continues.
For more on all of this, will speak to Nicole Friedman,
housing reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Normally, to buy
or sell a home, the seller will list their house publicly,
(06:36):
so they'll put it on multiple listing service kind of
a local database that has all of the house listings
and then from there it will go on to you know, Zillo,
Reds and realtor dot com, all of these websites so
that any buyer can see the home. They're also being
a for sale sign out front, lots of marketing, and
the idea is to get you know, as many buyers
as possible who want to tour the home and make offers.
(06:56):
And especially in this market, it is super competitive out
there for buyers. Buyers are desperate to buy homes and
there just aren't enough on the market. So any home
that does go on the market these days is likely
to sell very quickly and get multiple offers. But in
some cases, brokeragees are not putting listings on those public databases,
(07:17):
but they're keeping them kind of in house. It's called
an office exclusive, also called a pocket listing, where a
brokerage might have a house that they only market to
other agents inside that brokerage. And there are various reasons
that sellers might want to do this. It's a little
bit more common in high end markets. If a seller is,
say a celebrity or somebody who has a lot of
(07:38):
privacy or safety concerns, they might not want all of
these people touring their house, they might not want photos
of their house on the internet, So sometimes sellers prefer
these kind of more private listing options, and that means
that the house is kind of only advertised within a
certain brokerage and so only clients of that brokerage get
access to these listings. So what that also means is
(07:58):
that a buyer who is looking for a house to
buy in
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