In referring to the damage Mondelez suffered from the attack, Kroeger told the jury during his opening statements that the malware was downloaded to two of Mondelez’s servers on June 22, 2017, which caused the infected computers to render an error message on June 27, 2017, showing that their data had been encrypted and effectively locking them out of the system. From there further damage spread, infecting 1,700 of the company’s servers and 24,000 of its computers.
Kroeger said that Mondelez took “extraordinary steps” in attempts to mitigate the damage and tried to shut down its computers worldwide after the messages began displaying, “but a lot of the damage had already been done,” Kroeger said.
Kroeger told the jury that the attack severely crippled the company’s ability to do business, or to determine what products it needed to make, where it needed to make them, which stores needed the products, and how to ship them, which led to fewer of its products ending up on in stores and on shelves, which affected advertising, which in turn resulted in drastically reduced sales and revenue.
