Ransomware assault blamed for closure of all 7-Eleven shops in Denmark

Ransomware is responsible 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 cost methods had been introduced down within the assault.

Initially, the Danish division of 7-Eleven didn’t say that ransomware was liable for its issues, merely describing the incident as a “hacker assault”:

“We suspect that we now have been the sufferer of a hacker assault right now. We can’t use the money registers or settle for funds. Due to this fact, we’re closed till we all know the extent of the assault.”

Jesper Østergaard, CEO of 7-Eleven Denmark, instructed an area TV channel that the primary indication that the corporate had been attacked by hackers got here when employees reported that they had been unable to course of funds:

“The money registers simply stopped working in any respect the shops and the clerks began letting us know. That has by no means occurred earlier than.”

What laptop beep The corporate has since reportedly confirmed that it was the goal of a ransomware assault and that it’s working with regulation enforcement investigators. Since then, lots of the 7-Eleven shops in Denmark have reopened.

7-Eleven Denmark would not share many technical particulars concerning the assault, which signifies that we not solely do not know which household of ransomware may need precipitated the outage, however we additionally do not know the way it may need gotten into the group. The primary place.

For instance, is it attainable that each one 7-Eleven shops within the nation had been apparently affected concurrently as a result of all of them relied on the identical know-how, maybe supplied by a vendor that would have been compromised?

Additionally, there isn’t a public information, as of but, on whether or not the attackers have demanded ransom and what’s 7-Eleven’s place on whether or not or not it could be ready to pay its extortionists.

One piece of fine information is that the assault seems to have been restricted to simply Danish 7-Eleven shops, quite than spreading past. As a Twitter person commenteddifferent organizations can study from this worthwhile lesson concerning the worth of community segmentation.

7-Eleven is not the primary retailer to seek out shops closed following a ransomware assault.

Late final yr, for instance, the UK grocery store chain Spar disabled its money registers at greater than 300 branches.

Earlier within the yr, in separate assaults, Swedish Coop branches had been compelled to shut after being attacked, and an assault on a Dutch grocery store chain resulted in a cheese scarcity.

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