Mondelez, Zurich Reach Settlement in $100M Cyberattack Lawsuit

Mondelez International and Zurich American Insurance reached a settlement late last week in their multi-year legal battle over the food company’s $100 million claim regarding damage from the NotPetya cyberattack in 2017.

The insurer had initially refused to cover the damage to Mondelez, which in court documents attested it lost more than 1,700 servers and 24,000 laptops to the malware. Details of the final settlement have not been disclosed.

NotPetya was a destructive attack which masqueraded as ransomware, and reportedly caused more than $10 billion in global damages.

While it encrypted its victims’ machines and left a demand for a ransom payment, it was not actually designed to be decrypted.

The malware used an exploit which allowed the virus to spread automatically through trusted networks. It had first been introduced into a popular Ukrainian accounting company’s software but quickly spread beyond Ukraine to hit numerous other countries and companies, including Mondelez and Merck.