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

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 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’ve got been the sufferer of a hacker assault right this moment. We can not use the money registers or settle for funds. Subsequently, 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 workers 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. Lots of the 7-Eleven shops in Denmark have since reopened.

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

For instance, is it potential 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 expertise, maybe offered by a vendor that might have been compromised?

Additionally, there isn’t any 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 is likely to be ready to pay its extortionists.

One piece of excellent information is that the assault seems to have been restricted to only Danish 7-Eleven shops, somewhat than spreading past. As a Twitter person commenteddifferent organizations can be taught from this beneficial 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 12 months, for instance, the UK grocery store chain Spar disabled its money registers at greater than 300 branches.

Earlier within the 12 months, in separate assaults, Swedish Coop branches had been pressured to shut after being attacked, and an assault on a Dutch grocery store chain resulted in a cheese scarcity.

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