The CEO of British retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S), Stuart Machin, allegedly received an abuse-filled email from hackers demanding a ransom.
The email was sent to Machin on the 23rd of April by the cyber gang DragonForce using an employee email account, confirming for the first time that the retailer was hacked by a ransomware group.
"We have marched the ways from China all the way to the UK and have mercilessly raped your company and encrypted all the servers," says the email seen by the BBC.
"The dragon wants to speak to you so please head over to [our darknet website]."
The email including a racist term was sent to the M&S CEO and seven other executives using the account of an employee from the Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
In the note, hackers brag about installing ransomware across the M&S IT system and claim that they stole the private data of millions of customers.
In another confirmation that the email is genuine, it includes a darknet link to a portal for DragonForce victims to begin negotiating the ransom fee. Machin has reportedly refused to disclose whether M&S has paid a ransom.
M&S is still struggling to restore its systems nearly a month after the attack. The retailer has only recently confirmed that customer details might have been stolen, but stressed that no payment details, bank card information, or account passwords were compromised.
Despite that, the company still faces a hefty class action lawsuit - Thompsons Solicitors, a Scottish law firm, accuses M&S of failing to adequately protect customer data, thereby exposing shoppers to potential scams in a claim.
“I think this will be the biggest data theft case we have ever been involved in,” senior partner Patrick McGuire told The Sunday Mail.
In turn, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office can impose a fine equivalent to 2% of a company’s annual turnover.
Recently, M&S confirmed that the attack would cost it around £300 million ($403 million) in profit and anticipated that online disruption in its fashion, home, and beauty divisions would continue throughout June and into July.
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