Swedish giant Ikea has confirmed it suffered a cyberattack on its IT system originating from a Russia criminal group on Saturday 19 November.
Ikea have confirmed to the Swedish news site DN that the attack only affected the company in Morocco and Kuwait, where the business is run by a franchisee, independent from the main business.
Nevertheless, the attack is a cause for concern, particularly when those perpetrating are taken into account. The group behind the attack is called the Vice Society and are believed to be based in Russia. In the past, the group have utilised ransomware attacks in order to hack and steal information, and then blackmail their victims with the threat of releasing this information.
At the end of 2020 the Vice Society gained notoriety for targeting American educational institutions. However, they also expanded their targets, including hospitals in various countries across the world, including the US, France and New Zealand.
By using ransomware attacks, the group can get into a victim’s IT system and encrypt the hard drives so that the information becomes unreadable and the systems stop working. Then they inform the victim that they must pay a ransom for the key that can make the information available again. Often this is accompanied with a threat to leak data stolen in the breach.
In 2021, the company Coop was subjected to a large-scale attack of this kind, forcing stores to close for several days after the payment system was brought down.
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