Over the past weekend, the BlackMatter ransomware group compromised the networks of ‘NEW Cooperative Inc.’ (NCI). The NCI company is a farming equipment supply chain with 60 – 70 locations throughout Iowa. The ransom, which currently stands at $5.9 million, is set to double on September 25th at noon (to $11.8 million) if the ransom is not paid on time. Usually with ransoms this high, these are starting points for negotiations between BlackMatter and their compromised victims. In terms of stolen information, BlackMatter claims to have exfiltrated 1,000 gigabyte (~1 terabyte) of company data, including financial documents, network information, employee personal information, and social security numbers. A statement released by the NCI states “NEW Cooperative recently identified a cybersecurity incident that is impacting some of our company’s devices and systems. Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline to contain the threat, and we can confirm it has been successfully contained… We also quickly notified law enforcement and are working closely with data security experts to investigate and remediate the situation.” Current negotiations between NCI and BlackMatter are reportedly underway and are awaiting an outcome.