Saturday 3rd July 2021
800 branches have to close
Hackers paralyze Coop Sweden cash registers
The cyber attack on a subcontractor paralyzes Coop Sweden’s cash register system. Hundreds of branches have to close as a result. It is said to be a ransomware attack aimed at extorting money.
According to its own statements, one of the largest Swedish supermarket chains has temporarily closed around 800 branches after a cyber attack. “One of our subcontractors was the target of a digital attack and that is why our registers no longer work,” explained Coop Sweden. The group hopes to get the problem under control quickly and to be able to reopen the branches.
The supermarket chain did not provide any further details about the cyber attack. Coop Sweden did not disclose the name of the affected subcontractor or the method by which the company was hacked. However, the Swedish subsidiary of the software company Visma announced that the problem was related to a major cyber attack on the American IT company Kaseya on Friday.
After the attack, Kaseya asked its customers to immediately shut down their so-called VSA server “until you can get more information from us”. With the VSA server, companies can control all of their computers and printers from a single workstation.
According to its own information, Kaseya is a leading provider of information technology and IT security for small and medium-sized companies. A ransomware cyber attack was reportedly carried out on the network software. In attacks with ransomware, hackers lock or encrypt computer systems in order to extort money from users for the release of their data.
Most recently, there were multiple cyber attacks on US companies. In May, the colonial oil pipeline in the USA and the US subsidiary of the world’s largest meat producer JBS fell victim to a cyber attack with ransomware. Last year, hackers gained access to the systems of ministries, authorities and companies using software from the American IT company SolarWinds.
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