Ransomware is accountable for the closure of all 175 7-Eleven shops in Denmark on Monday.
The retailer closed all of its shops in Denmark after its money registers and fee techniques had been introduced down within the assault.
Initially, 7-Eleven’s Danish division didn’t say that ransomware was accountable for its issues, merely describing the incident as a “hacker assault”:
“We suspect that now we have been the sufferer of a hacker assault at this time. We are able to’t use the money registers nor settle for funds. We’re due to this fact closed till we all know the extent of the assault.”
Jesper Østergaard, the CEO of 7-Eleven Denmark instructed a neighborhood TV station that the primary indication that the corporate had been focused by hackers got here when workers reported that they had been unable to course of funds:
“The money registers simply stopped working in all of the shops and the workers began letting us know. That has by no means occurred earlier than.”
As Bleeping Pc experiences, the corporate has since confirmed that it was focused by a ransomware assault, and that it’s working with police investigators. Lots of 7-Eleven’s shops in Denmark have since reopened.
7-Eleven Denmark will not be sharing a lot in the best way of technical element relating to the assault, which signifies that not solely can we not know what household of ransomware may need brought about the disruption however we additionally have no idea the way it may need entered the organisation within the first place.
As an illustration, is it potential that the entire nation’s 7-Eleven shops had been seemingly impacted concurrently as a result of they had been all reliant on the identical expertise – maybe offered by a provider who would possibly themselves have been compromised?
As well as, there isn’t any public phrase – as but – about whether or not the attackers have made any ransom calls for, and what 7-Eleven’s place is on whether or not it may be ready to pay its extortionists or not.
One piece of excellent information is that the assault seems to have been restricted simply to 7-Eleven’s Danish shops, slightly than spreading additional afield. As one Twitter person commented, different organisations would possibly study from this useful lesson relating to the worth of community segmentation.
7-Eleven will not be the primary retailer to have discovered itself with closed shops following a ransomware assault.
Late final 12 months, for example, the UK grocery store chain Spar had its checkouts disabled at over 300 branches.
Earlier within the 12 months, in separate assaults, Swedish branches of Coop had been compelled to close after being hit, and an assault on a Dutch grocery store chain really resulted in a cheese scarcity.
Editor’s Word: The opinions expressed on this visitor creator article are solely these of the contributor, and don’t essentially mirror these of Tripwire, Inc.