Africa’s biggest supermarket hit by ransomware attacks
RansomHouse group steals hundreds of gigabytes of data
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Africa’s largest supermarket chain, Shoprite Holdings, has suffered aransomwareattack that may have put personal user data at risk.
The company issued a statement in which it notified customers in Eswatini, Namibia, and Zambia, of possible compromise.
“Additional security measures to protect against further data loss were implemented by amending authentication processes and fraud prevention and detection strategies to protect customer data,” the statement reads. “Accessto affected areas of the network has also been locked down. The data compromise included names and ID numbers, but no financial information or bank account numbers.”
Shoprite ransomware
Soon after posting the warning, a threat actor known as RansomHouse took responsibility for the attack, the publication says. Allegedly, the group posted an evidence sample, 600GB in size, claiming to be the data it stole from the supermarket’s endpoints.
Not only did they post an evidence sample, but they also took to Telegram to explain how Shoprite’s employees’ lack of cybersecurity practices was “outrageous”. “Their staff was keeping enormous amounts of personal data in plain text, completely unprotected”, the group apparently said. There was no talk of anymalware, or vulnerabilities, abused in the attack.
The group also said it invited the company to negotiate the returns of the data and the payment for the decryption key, but all they did was change their passwords, “like it solves everything”.
This devious ransomware is now more dangerous than ever>Ransomware actors have found a new way to make victims pay up>This ransomware looks to make the world a better place
In case Shoprite decides not to pay the ransom demand, the data will probably be sold to third parties, or leaked publicly, in case there’s no demand for the data.
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Shoprite is the largest supermarket chain on the African continent. It has almost 3,000 stores in a number of countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, DRC, and Angola, BleepingComputer finds. It has almost 150,000 employees, and revenue of $5.8 billion.
Via:BleepingComputer
Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.
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