Copper Mountain Mine (CMM) has resumed operations after the December 27, 2022 ransomware attack.
In a release issued on January 6, 2023, the company said work at its primary crusher had resumed on January 1, shortly after it also reopened its factories, which had been actively closed following the attacks.
On January 4th, the factory was in full production.
“Operations are now stable as the rest of our business systems have been fully restored,” the release said.
During the downtime caused by the attack on the mine’s IT systems, CMM continued to ship copper from its inventory.
“During the outage, all environmental control systems at Copper Mountain Mine were operational and there were no environmental incidents or human casualties.”
CMM’s IT team works with cybersecurity experts to establish new safeguards for systems.
“The company’s primary objective is to return to full business function in a safe and secure manner.”
According to the state’s Information Security Division (ISB), ransomware is a type of malicious code or malware that infects computers and networks, spreads rapidly, and encrypts data.
This malware makes the data inaccessible to the users and the criminals demand payment from the users to decrypt the files and return them.
Payments are often requested in Bitcoin or other electronic currency.
According to the ISB, there are three common ways computers are attacked.
• Email – Individuals click on malicious links or attachments in phishing emails.
• Malvertising – Individuals visit sites that display infected advertisements.
• Drive-by Downloads – Individuals use unpatched exploits to visit legitimate or illegal websites. This means that simply opening a website can run ransomware without your knowledge.
Copper Mountain Mine has over 400 employees.
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