Threat Management

Cyberattack burns out marijuana tech company’s servers

For once, marijuana enthusiasts have actual reason to feel paranoid.

A company that provides business software for marijuana distributors issued a video statement over the weekend, following a cyberattack this month that disabled its servers and continues to impede its clients' sales.

The company, Denver-based MJ Freeway, sells an ERP solution that helps cannabis sellers maintain compliance with government regulations, as well as perform tasks such as forecasting, employee scheduling, order management and supply chain management. According to a statement on the company's website home page, unknown attackers took down MJ Freeway's production and back-up servers on Jan. 8, causing an outage for all clients.

“Current analysts shows the attackers did not extract any client or patient data and did not view any patient data, thanks to encryption measures we have in place,” said MJ Freeway CEO Amy Poinsett in the video statement. “This outage is a unique situation caused by an unprecedented malicious attack. The damage from the attack is extensive, but much is reparable.”

Poinsett said that the company has also been working one-on-one with hundreds of online clients in order to set them up on an alternative system. In the meantime, many affected pot vendors have been forced to process their orders manually, noted the Boston Globe, which originally reported the attack.

Bradley Barth

As director of multimedia content strategy at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for online conferences, webcasts, podcasts video/multimedia projects — often serving as moderator or host. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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