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Major UK retailer Co-op has revealed that the cyber attack it suffered earlier this year resulted in the data of all of its members being exfiltrated by hackers.
Speaking with BBC Breakfast, Co-op CEO Shirine Khoury-Haq revealed that the personal data of all of its 6.5 million members had been stolen by cyber criminals.
“I’m devastated that information was taken. I’m also devastated by the impact that it took on our colleagues as well as they tried to contain all of this,” she said.
“There was no financial data, no transaction data, but it was names and addresses and contact information that was lost.”
Co-op is member-run, owned by its members rather than shareholders, ensuring that its customers have a say as to how the business is run and makes profits.
While all 6.5 million members were affected, Co-op previously announced that thanks to swift action and rapidly shutting down its systems, it prevented ransomware encryption from taking hold, leading to a faster recovery.
It also said that while it could not “erase” what the hackers had done, it was able to monitor the threat actor’s “every mouse click”, which they shared with authorities.
However, Khoury-Haq has said the cyber incident on Co-op felt personal and that she is “incredibly sorry” for the incident.
“Early on, I met with our IT staff, and they were in the midst of it. I will never forget the looks on their faces, trying to fight off these criminals,” she said.
“It hurt my members, they took their data, and it hurt our customers, and that, I do take personally.”
Since the cyber attack, which came during a wider cyber crime wave by the same threat actor against UK retailers, including Marks & Spencer (M&S) and Harrods, four individuals were arrested by the British National Crime Agency (NCA).
The NCA said it had arrested three males – two of whom are aged 19 and one is 17 – and one female aged 20, who were suspected of breaching the Computer Misuse Act for money laundering, blackmail and participating in organised crime.
The suspected criminals were arrested at home and are being detained in London and the West Midlands of England after having their devices seized. They are currently being questioned by the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit as part of an investigation into the breach.
Experts, media, and the organisations themselves have attributed the cyber attacks to either the DragonForce ransomware gang or the Scattered Spider hacking collective, after investigations determined that DragonForce malware was found on victim systems.
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