The French food giant Avril victim of a cyberattack

Avril is the fourth largest French agro-industrial group, the national leader in vegetable oils and proteins from sunflower and rapeseed, and is active in animal and human food, chemicals, and renewable energies.

The group was the victim of a cyberattack caused by the “opening of a corrupted file.” The group confirmed this attack this 3 November 2021 but it did not give any details, nor evoked an encryption of the data. This can let suppose an early detection in the chronology of attack.

Avril decided to cut its IT network, blocking its employees’ access to the group’s servers, their email addresses, and the company’s digital tools. Avril has confirmed that on 3 November, some of the group’s headquarters and sites operated in “degraded mode.”

On 8 November 2021, Avril’s Coudekerque-Branche plant (in the Nord départment) reported that access to servers had still not been restored and that packaging lines were still down.