Luxury department store Harrods was forced to shut some systems on Thursday after being hit by a cyber attack — the latest retailer to be affected in the UK. The incident came amid a week of chaos for Marks and Spencers, marked by a massive loss in sales and lower share price.
“We recently experienced attempts to gain unauthorised access to some of our systems. Our seasoned IT security team immediately took proactive steps to keep systems safe and as a result we have restricted internet access at our sites today,” The Guardian quoted Harrods as saying in a statement.
Reports however indicate that the website and stores of the luxury department store — including the Knightsbridge flagship, H Beauty and airport outlets — continued to operate. The company said that it was not asking customers to take any action, indicating that it did not suspect that the data had been accessed.
The incident came even as fellow retailer, Marks and Spencers continued to reel from the impact of another attack — attributed to the hacking collective called Scattered Spider. According to reports, the company has now seen more than £ 500 million wiped off its stock market value of the company. The website is still not taking orders and gaps have emerged on store shelves as the company’s automated stock systems are not working.
While M&S has not officially confirmed the cause of the chaos, experts told the BBC that ransomware called DragonForce was used in the attack — with one describing the incident as the detonation of a “digital bomb”.