Asahi stops pouring after cyberattack stops production

Asahi’s Japanese distributions centers and customer services are offline
No ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet
Recent cyberattacks have cost high-profile businesses millions

Japan’s largest brewery, Asahi Group Holdings, has become the latest company in an alarmingly fast growing list of victims to have experienced a cyberattack whcih has forced it to close some work.

The attack seems to have only affected the company’s domestic operations, with international branches unaffected so far – but it has still left Asahi with no choice but to suspend orders and shipments across Japan.

Apart from distribution center shutdowns, call centers and customer service desks have also been taken offline.

Asahi hit by cyberattack, still online internationally

Asahi holds an estimated one-third of Japan’s domestic beer market, but it has a global reach through its other brands, including Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, Grolsch and Fuller’s.

Still, Japan accounts for around half of Asahi’s profits, making the disruption particularly impactful, even if the company does manage to contain it domestically.

“We are actively investigating the cause and working to restore operations; however, there is currently no estimated timeline for recovery,” the company declared in a press release. “The system failure is limited to our operations within Japan.”

“We are actively investigating the cause and working to restore operations; however, there is currently no estimated timeline for recovery,” Asahi added.

Right now, no ransomware gangs have taken credit for the attack.

But Asahi’s story is only a small portion of a much larger global trend. An earlier M&S attack attributed to Scattered Spider kept some systems offline for four months, with fiscal year profits set to be slashed by £300 million.

A more recent attack on Jaguar Land Rover put a pause to new car manufacturing, with the company still in the process of restoring systems.

For now, Asahi has not shared any more details. It could take weeks of investigative and recovery work to fully restore systems, and that’s if attackers aren’t able to move laterally and affect Asahi’s global operations.