First public interview discloses scale of April attack.
All 6.5 million members of the Co-op had data stolen in a cyber-attack on the retailer in April.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast today, chief executive Shirine Khoury-Haq, said: “I'm devastated that information was taken. I'm also devastated by the impact that it took on our colleagues as well as they tried to contain all of this.”
In the first public interview since the April incident, she said no financial or transaction data was impacted, but “it was names and addresses and contact information that was lost," she added.
Ms Khoury-Haq said that she was "incredibly sorry" for the attack and that it was "personal" to her because of the impact that it had on her colleagues.
Accessed and Extracted
In early May, the Co-op announced that attackers accessed and extracted customer data from one of its systems in the recent attack.
Clare Loveridge, VP and GM EMEA at Arctic Wolf, said: “Retailers, especially those that operate membership schemes, pose a goldmine to hackers due to the amount of valuable data they hold – and this will sadly expose members to identity theft and fraud for a long time to come.
“Even as retailers such as M&S and Co-op begin to recover, cyber-criminals are known to switch tactics and use the data stolen in one attack to brute-force their way into another. What’s more, retail continues to face some of the highest initial ransomware demands out of any other industry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to be a number one target.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
