How a Cyberattack at a Company You’ve Never Heard of Nearly Derailed My Anniversary Carrot Cake

Each year since we got married, my husband and I celebrated our birthday with a carrot cake. Some years it was incredible bakery in our old neighborhoodWhile others, it was a questionable effort picked up in a station store on the way back to the office, but often I cook mine.

What is funny is that none of us really like the carrot cake. It ended up being the upper layer of our wedding cake, so we have one every year. This is tradition for you.

This year, for our 20th anniversary, I had my mind pastry shop. Launching a three -layer cake in the middle of a busy working day may seem intimidating, but it is in my skills set. And I was armed with a new recipe and a giant carrot bag. I just needed some key ingredients.

Still the procrastinator, I started to fill my basket online the day before. I also needed the creation for a fairly fancy dinner, as well as my regular grocery products for the week. But to my surprise, the virtual shelves of my whole food in the New York region were unusually naked. He brought back Memories of the pandemic. The basic items of the store brand that I buy every week such as tortillas, pizza sauce and cheese were out of stock. And the raisins and the cream cheese I needed for my cake.

Slightly panicked at that time, I remembered the news of a cyber attack in one of the main suppliers of Whole Foods A few days before, it forced him to remove her offline systems. Some experts had hypothesized that it could affect store supplies, but I did not expect the impact to be so fast and so important.

Cybercriminals have retail companies that have been targeted for a long time, as well as those which provide them, both for their money and their data. They know that if they manage to violate these systems, retailers will probably pay for the problem to disappear.

That said, this year was particularly bad for cyber attacks on retailers, explains Max Vetter, vice-president of Cyber ​​at Immersive, who specializes in the training of companies to manage online threats.

So far this year, retailers, including Adidas,, Marks & Spencer,, Harassment,, Cartier,, Victoria’s Secret And Northern face All of which have affected their operations. And while the supplier of Whole Foods, United Natural Foods, is not technically a retailer, the impact of the attack on it continues to be felt by consumers.

“It is not normal,” said Vetter, who worked in the British police and as an intelligence analyst before joining immersive. “We have not seen this in the retail and food another year that I can remember.”

For companies, this can mean millions of lost sales and unexpected costs related to attack management. In the case of United Natural Foods, its scholarship price fell on the news, lowering approximately 20% in last week.

For most consumers, this means more aggravation than anything. In my case, I was able to find my raisins and my cream cheese in a brick and mortar store, but I paid more than I wanted and it took a while since I had my day.

But for some buyers, the consequence may be more disastrous. If the only store in an isolated city cannot replenish its shelves, this cannot mean any food for people without the means to reach another.

“This is something to know and I don’t think we have thought about it enough,” said Vetter.

Why the attackers attack

When online attackers go after retailers, they are looking for two things: money and data.

If they are able to lock the system of a business with ransomwareIt is likely that the company will pay to hand over its operational systems. The more they have broken down, the more money loses money. In addition to that, virgin websites are simply not an excellent look for retailers. Buyers who fear their data can choose to shop elsewhere.

And the attackers are after their data. Credit card numbers and online account identification information can obviously be sold for fraudsters, but it can therefore be less obvious customer data such as names, emails, postal addresses and telephone numbers.

The reward points linked to the loyalty programs managed by food and catering companies are also as good as cybercriminal money, explains Rob Ainscough, chief advisor to the identity of Silverfort for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Double extortion attempts, where the attackers lock the system of a company with ransomware and then fly And Threatening to publish data from a company’s customers, have also become common, he said.

“So, if they are not paid on the ransom, they will try to be paid on the data,” said Ainscough, who spent a decade on online security for a large multinational retailer before joining Silverfort.

No doubt, this is what attackers are looking for when targeting any type of business, so we don’t know why they seem to love retailers so much this year.

Vetter says it could be due to the fact that retailers are considered easy targets. While banks and other financial institutions have long had solid online security practices, and industrial companies have also strengthened their defenses in recent years in the wake of high -level attacks such as the 2021 Ransoonie of the colonial pipelineThe retailers were slower to do the same.

This can be difficult, he says, for business security managers who are not particularly focused on technology to obtain the resources they need with executives who can simply see cybersecurity as a cost. Unlike other more flashy types of technology, when cyber -defects work, they go largely unnoticed.

“I think retail is one of those areas that probably did not think it was a problem,” said vetter, referring to the possibility of cyber attacks. “Obviously, I think they do it now.”

Dangers of the supply chain

This is one thing if a cyber attack prevents you from ordering new clothes or jewelry. This is another when that prevents you from putting food on your table.

The attack on United Natural Foods and subsequent shortages in many Whole Foods stores have revealed exactly how fragile the food supply can be. But Whole Foods, with her wealthy clientele and locations in large cities and suburban areas, is not the only store to buy.

This is not true for many members of The cooperative group. It is a chain of stores based in the United Kingdom which belongs to its members and serves more than 17 million people in the United Kingdom, including many retirees who live in remote regions and may not be able to drive.

For some, these are the only stores in places like small villages on the islands off the coast of Scotland where people may need to get on a ferry to shop elsewhere, says Vetter. So when Co-op was struck with a cyber attack Last month, there were a lot of people who panic.

After detecting the breach, Coop quickly took its offline systemspossibly preventing them from being infected with ransomware. But the disruptions of his supply chain and logistics operations had a huge effect on deliveries in stores, whose shelves were quickly left naked.

Co-op was left rushed to prioritize and determine what stores had to be reappropriate, despite the group’s limited operations.

“There is a real human risk of famine,” said Vetter. “You do not think of a relatively small and essential store of national infrastructure, but for some people.”