Yum Brands Inc, officially the owner of top food chain restaurants KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, was reportedly hit by a ransomware attack, forcing the IT staff to close about 300 eatery outlets across the United Kingdom.
As the malware targeted, the core servers, orders and billing were deeply affected, resulting in temporary shut of the outlets from afternoon hours of January 18th, 2023, i.e. Wednesday.
Currently, the security measures to contain the malware spread have been placed, and the situation is reported to be under control. However, cybersecurity experts pressed into service have confirmed that recovery from the incident might take time and stores might have to operate for some days on a manual note, with pen & paper.
Yum! Brands, happens to be the second known business firm in the UK that has been hit by a cyber attack. Just within a few days after the postal service, ‘Royal Mail’ was hit by LockBit ransomware- linked to Russia.
In December 2022, Vice Society targeted school districts and Universities operating in United Kingdom. The Play Ransomware group was held responsible for disrupting services on cloud service provider Rackspace in the same month.
The only good news is that none of the customer data was compromised in the incident and Yum confirmed this in its official statement. It also cleared the air that it has no intention to bow down to the demands of hackers and pay a ransom.
NOTE- In a ransomware incident, hackers first steal information from the targeted database and then encrypt it until a ransom is paid in Cryptocurrency. So, only time can give an apt answer on whether any information steal took place in the attack on Yum Brands Inc.
