A cyber attack in a primary organic food distributor has led to empty shelves in Whole Foods stores throughout the country.
The company, United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI), based in Rhode Island, is one of the largest organic food distributors in the country and an important partner with Whole Foods. He realized a cyber attack on June 5, according to a presentation before the Bag and Securities Commission, and took some of his out -of -line systems, which hindered his ability to distribute orders to customers.
A United Natural Food spokesman refused to share details about cyber attack, saying it was a continuous operation. But it occurs following a series of cyber attacks where a notorious cyber gang has been aimed at the main retail customers with ransomware, which makes the key inoperable systems as computer pirates require payment.
A Whole Foods corporate spokesman apologized for discomfort and said that the company is working to quickly replenish the shelves, but refused to answer specific questions.
Two Whole Foods employees, who were not authorized by the company to talk to the press about the incident, told NBC News that the shortage was significant.
“It is affecting the operations in a very, very significant way,” said an employee of a Sacramento Whole Foods. “The shelves do not even have products in some places. The shipments we receive are not what we need, or we need it, but it is too much of a product because UNFI cannot communicate with the stores to obtain adequate orders.”
A Whole Foods employee in North Carolina said: “We had to close our sandwich station on Tuesday because we didn’t receive bread from bread. My store almost ran out of garbage bags the other day.”
UNFI’s spokesman said there was no clear timeline for when the distribution would return to normal, but that Thursday had begun to gradually put some systems.
John Baley, director of the Food and Agriculture Information Analysis Center, a non -profit non -profit organization non -profit purposes for the food and agriculture industry, said that the complexity of the food supply chain means that if a company is suddenly hindered by a cybernetic atago, it can cause effects that prevent food from reaching customers.
“For a standard and moderately processed food product that is in an important supermarket, 10 or more companies can participate in the supply chain. Even fresh products, such as an apple sold in a farmers market, can involve multiple companies, such as the farm, the local distributor/food center and the retailer,” he said in a statement sent by email to NBC News.
Beyond Whole Foods, smaller companies have also faced the shortage that UNFI cannot automatically process orders. The Community Food Cooperative in Bellingham, Washington, told customers on Facebook on Monday that, like UNFI, it is its main distributor, “it will see shelves scarcely stored in some of our corridors” and asked customers to limit purchases to two of each item.
Caitlin Smith, logistics coordinator at Cr England, a transport and logistics company, told NBC News that UNFI’s interruption has left his company unable to deliver refrigerated foods to a dairy processing client.
“I have three pilots stuck due to all this Unfi debacle,” he said.
The costs of the cyber attack will end up moving to the consumer, he said. “At the end of the day, you and I, as customers, end up paying for this. Therefore, it has a domino effect.”
Ransomware attacks are common. But a particularly vicious campaign has reached the main retailers in recent months. At least three main British retailers were beaten earlier this year, including Marks & Spencer, who had to stop online orders for weeks; The cooperative, which saw the computer pirates to leake significant data from customers to the BBC; and Harrods, who had to restrict Internet access in stores.
Google said last month that these attacks overlap with a freely affiliated group that the cybersecurity industry has called “dispersed spider”, largely English -speaking young people who have dominated the ability to deceive people to give them online restricted access. The same group was accused of breaking into the companies of Casino de Las Vegas in 2023. It has begun to attack the main American retailers seriously, Google said.
Victoria’s Secret was also the victim of a cyber attack in May, although it is not clear if the same group was responsible.
