Well, it seems like British businesses are facing a real pickle these days. Apparently, hackers are having a field day infiltrating systems due to a change in their hacking business model. Luxury fashion brand Dior and M&S are just a couple of the victims, with customer data being stolen left and right. M&S is even facing the aftermath of an attack that started back in April – talk about a headache!
### What’s Going On?
So, on Tuesday, M&S spilled the tea that customer data had been swiped, but luckily, no “usable” payment details or passwords were taken. Phew! However, online shopping is on hiatus at M&S, and they’re not hiring at the moment while they try to clean up the mess. Co-op narrowly dodged a major crisis by catching some crooks in their network and shutting things down before it got out of hand. Harrods also had its own battle with hackers recently. It’s like a cyber warfare out there!
### The New Hacking Game
Now, according to Dr. Harjinder Lallie, a cybersecurity guru at the University of Warwick, the hacking scene has changed. Dr. Lallie mentioned, “It’s just frightening. I’ve been in cybersecurity for 26 years – I’ve never known a time like this.” Yikes! The group behind DragonForce, a set of tools that basically hold companies hostage until they cough up a ransom, decided to switch things up. They’re now into “ransomware-as-a-service” – sounds fancy, right? Basically, they let wannabe hackers use their tools to launch attacks and keep 80% of the loot, while DragonForce takes a 20% cut. It’s like a cyber black market out there!
So, these newbie hackers don’t even need to be tech-savvy anymore. They can just buy the software off dark-web forums, like it’s Amazon but for cybercrime. Apparently, traces of DragonForce ransomware were found in the M&S attack. Scary stuff! Criminals sneak into a company’s network, usually by tricking someone, and then lurk around, learning the ins and outs of the system. Dr. Lallie warned that tons of UK businesses probably have hackers camping out in their networks without even knowing. Creepy, right? It’s like having a cyber squatter in your digital space!
