Co-op: All forms of payment now working after cyber attack
The Co-op has told its customers that all forms of payments are now working at its stores and online while stock levels should improve by this weekend.
The Manchester-headquartered group, which operates almost 2,400 stores around the UK, said it is in “the recovery phase” after suffering a significant cyber attack which caused two weeks of payment and stock issues.
On 30 April, the Co-op shut down parts of its IT systems and suspended contactless payments at around 10 per cent of stores after detecting a potential breach.
“Following the malicious third-party cyber-attack, we took early and decisive action to restrict access to our systems in order to protect our Co-op,” a spokesperson for the company said.
“We are now in the recovery phase and are taking steps to bring our systems gradually back online in a safe and controlled manner,” it added.
Co-op targeted by same group behind M&S and Harrods attacks
The company said its stock ordering system, which had caused issues with food availability at some of its stores, was now “fully back online” with choice at stores to improve this weekend.
“We’d like to thank all our colleagues, members, partners and suppliers for their support so far. We will provide further updates to our members as we continue to make progress from this cyber-attack,” the spokesperson added.
It is likely that the Co-op attack was conducted by the same group as the M&S and Harrods attacks, with hackers able to access systems through a shared third-party supplier or an employee phishing scam.
While Harrods was able to mitigate its attack, M&S told markets yesterday that some customer data was stolen during its attack – although it said the data did not include useable payment details or account passwords.
Cyber crime experts have told online shoppers to stay vigilant amid the attacks, with a high likelihood for phishing scams using stolen information.