Ransomware Attack Paralyzes Duvel Brewery Operations

On March 5, Belgium’s Duvel Moortgat Brewery suffered a ransomware attack which adversely impacted its production facility, bringing it to a standstill.

“At 1:30 a.m. last night, the alarms went off in Duvel’s IT department because ransomware had been detected,” Duvel’s communications manager Ellen Aarts told the Belgian news publication Nieuwsblad.

“Therefore, production was immediately stopped. It is not yet known when it could restart. We hope to restart today or tomorrow,’’ Aarts continued.

Aarts reassured customers that distribution would not be affected and Duvel’s availability will not change.

“We have more than enough beer in stock to cover this production stop” Aarts said.

However, the press statement did not reveal if or any impact was suffered by the brand’s subsidiaries in Antwerp, Oudenaarde, and Achouffe.

At the time of writing, the attack has been claimed by the ransomware group Stormous. On March 7, a day after the attack, on its dark web page, the Belgian brewer was added to the gang’s list of victims.

Belgium-based Duvel Moortgat is also well-known for other popular beers like Vedett, Maredsous, and La Chouffe.

The pro-Russia Stormous group is believed to have begun operations as early as mid-2021. According to Trustwave SpiderLabs, the group claims to have attacked 700 US websites and 44 American companies, including Coca-Cola, Mattel, Epic Games, and Danaher.

The ransomware gang in its mission statement reveals the US, Ukraine, India, and other western nation governments and private organizations as its targets. However, in January 2024, the gang breached Indonesian state-owned railway company Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) and published a sample of stolen data on the dark web.

In August 2023, Stormous formed a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) partnership with five other hacker groups, collectively known as “The Five Families”. Jointly the groups are known to deploy double extortion ransomware attacks on various business entities in multiple countries, including Cuba, India, Thailand, and China among others.