Cyber attack forces Damm to stop brewing beer
The main brewery, in El Prat, could run out of stock in a matter of days
BarcelonaA computer attack has forced Damm to halt its beer production in El Prat de Llobregat, where the company's has its largest brewery. Sources close to the company have explained to ARA that if the situation is prolonged the plant could run out of stock in a matter of days. The company is being held to a ransom for a figure that this newspaper has not been able to confirm.
The same sources explain that had the attack taken place in the summer months the consequences would have been even more catastrophic, since, due to the increase in beer consumption, stocks usually barely last three days.
Damm spokesmen only told this newspaper that since Wednesday morning the company is experiencing a "computer incident in the operating system" without specifying its causes. "They are under investigation," they said, adding that no hypothesis has been ruled out. The same spokesmen have explained that from the first moment the protocol established for "this kind of incident" has been activated and that they are working to "restore" all production. They have also insisted that at the moment distribution in hotels, restaurants and cafeterias is being carried out "normally" and that they do not know when it will all be over.
In addition to the factory in El Prat, which is the most important both in size and production, Damm also brews beer in smaller quantities in the other two plants it has in Spain, one in Murcia and the other in Alicante.
Trickle of cyber-attacks
The trickle of computer attacks on companies and institutions is increasingly continuous. Two of the latest attacks have affected the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the German multinational MediaMarkt. In the case of the UAB, the perpetrators disabled computer services a month ago creating chaos on campus, affecting more than 650,000 files and demanding a €3m ransom. In fact, this week they have threatened to make the information obtained from companies and entities thanks to the cyberattack public. As for MediaMarkt, it directly affected its stores in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and, to a lesser extent, those in other countries such as Spain. Specifically, the attack affected 3,100 servers and caused cash registers to malfunction.