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UK retail giant Co-op has run into hiccups during the long-awaited restocking of its stores, resulting in Christmas pastries appearing on shelves in May and June.
In late April, Co-op Group revealed that it had suffered a cyber attack, which led to its internal ordering system being taken offline and store shelves going empty.
Now, thanks to quick action preventing ransomware from taking hold, Co-op has begun restocking its shelves. However, things have not quite returned to normal.
Shoppers have seen that Christmas items like Chicken and Cranberry Festive Slices appear on shelves, despite Christmas being over six months away.
“They sent them, so we cooked them,” one staff member told The Sun.
“It was a bit strange, but we have to keep items on the shelves or customers will go elsewhere.
“Customers have been a bit confused, but it’s still a good product.
“They’ve actually been quite popular despite being so out of season.”
Additionally, a spokesman said Co-op was working with suppliers to restore stock to normal.
“Stock availability has improved, and we continue to work closely with our suppliers,” the spokesman said.
The latest issue is a small one compared to the troubles faced by fellow UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S), which disabled its systems too late and had its network infected with ransomware.
M&S, which is still dealing with outages and facing weekly costs of an estimated £43 million, also confirmed that data was affected in the cyber attack.
“As we continue to manage the current cyber incident, we have written to customers to let them know that unfortunately the nature of the incident means some personal customer data has been taken,” said M&S.
Strangely, the retailer continues to instruct its customers that they don’t have to take any action, when they should keep an eye out for scams using their personal details.
“Importantly, there is no evidence that this data has been shared, and it does not include usable card or payment details, or account passwords, so there is no need for customers to take any action,” M&S said.
While the relationship with this current cyber incident is unconfirmed, one M&S customer last month said that scammers attempted to reach out, claiming they were from M&S by using the last four digits of their credit card number to verify their identity, which may suggest that some card information may have been leaked.
“Yesterday I received a NoCallerID who wanted to scam me using my name and last 4 digits of my credit card. I hung up and wasn’t scammed. However, I tried to return an online order to M&S and their staff said systems were down. Now there’s an admission of a cyber attack,” said the customer in a post on X.
“It transpires the card I paid M&S with is the one the scammers used against me. The scammer wanted access to my phone and wanted me to read a 6 digit code back to him. This would have given him access to all info on my phone. I hung up and called my bank myself. Be alert!”
M&S may have concluded that partial card information is not “usable”.
The retailer has, however, forced a password reset and provided guides on how to stay safe when on the web.
“To give customers extra peace of mind, they will be prompted to reset their password the next time they visit or log onto their M&S.com account on our website or app, and we have shared information on how to stay safe online,” said M&S.
M&S has since reported that it could be facing a $625 million loss (£300 million), and that systems could be down until July.
“Customers will be able to shop online within the next few weeks with momentum increasing throughout June/July,” said CEO Stuart Machin.
In another statement, he added: “Over the last few weeks, we have been managing a highly sophisticated and targeted cyber attack, which has led to a limited period of disruption.”
“This incident is a bump in the road, and we will come out of this in better shape and continue our plan to reshape M&S for customers, colleagues and shareholders.”
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