Wholesale giant METRO confirmed to have suffered a cyberattack

International cash and carry giant METRO suffered this week IT infrastructure outages following a cyberattack.

International cash and carry giant METRO was hit by a cyberattack that caused IT infrastructure outages. Metro employs more than 95,000 people in 681 stores worldwide, most of them in Germany, its sales reached 24.8 billion euros in 2020.

The outages impacted stores worldwide, the company confirmed the cyber attack in an official statement, it is investigating the incident with the help of external experts:

“METRO/MAKRO is currently experiencing a partial IT infrastructure outage for several technical services. METRO’s IT team, together with external experts, immediately launched a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the service disruption. The latest results of the analysis confirm a cyber attack on METRO systems as the cause of the IT infrastructure outage.” reads the statement issued by the company.

The wholesale giant notified relevant authorities and warned customers that delays might occur due to service disruptions.

In response to the outage, the teams in the stores set up offline systems to process payments.

The company did not provide technical details about the attack, but the problems faced by Metro suggest it was the victim of a ransomware attack.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, cyberattack)