The websites of Denmark based supermarket chain Bilka and Fotex were taken down by hackers at the launch of the Black Friday sales campaigns. And as per a Danish news source, the websites proper functioning was disrupted by a malicious cyber attack campaign frolicking in the form of Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS).
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that the hackers were not attempting to obtain data with the latest attack. As they were just interested in disrupting the retailer’s sales graph for this year’s holiday season.
Dansk Supermarked, which happens to be Denmark’s 2nd largest retailer owns 100 Fotex supermarkets and 18 Bilka hypermarkets. The said retailer also runs Netto discount retail shops in Germany, Poland, and Sweden. Pretty soon, the said company will also own the remaining stake of AP Moller-Maersk for 5.53 billion Danish Crowns or USD $882 million. FYI, $1= 6.23 Danish Crowns.
Note- Netto remained unaffected by the cyber attack.
In September this year, both the US FBI and Europe’s GCHQ issued a warning to companies operating in UK and US that there is a high possibility for hackers to target companies and individuals in the holiday season.
GCHQ went a bit forward and issued an alert that some countries like Russia, China, and North Korea will try to disturb the political landscape of the West by targeting retail sector with cyber attacks at the time of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
And as predicted we have witnessed the holiday season’s first cyber attack on the Danish retailer.
Let’s hope that we won’t witness any more cyber attacks in this year and forever.
