McDonald’s In South Korea And Taiwan Breached By Hackers

McDonald’s has been hit by a data breach in South Korea and Taiwan which compromised some customer and employee information. The world’s largest fast food chain now joins a rapidly growing list of companies worldwide that have fallen victim to hackers.

According to Reuters, the company said that the hackers accessed e-mails, phone numbers, and delivery addresses, but not customer payment information. As one would expect, McDonald’s will be notifying regulators and affected customers.

Information about the breach apparently came from an investigation involving external consultants that was initiated after unauthorised activity was discovered on the company’s network.

“While we were able to close off access quickly after identification, our investigation has determined that a small number of files were accessed, some of which contained personal data,” McDonalds reportedly said in a statement.

Cyberattacks have been increasing at an alarming rate, with their targets and consequences growing exponentially bigger. Last month, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in the US crippled fuel supplies in a large swath of the country for days. Later, hackers using ransomware struck at the world’s largest meat supplier JBS, temporarily paralysing some company operations in Australia, Canada, and the US.

Unsurprisingly, the ability of cybercriminals to attack critical infrastructure and critical industries is a top worry in Washington and other Western capitals right now. Many of these cyberattacks have been linked to Russia or hackers based in Russia – a country that has undoubtedly poor relations with America.

Acer Breached By Ransomware; Hackers Demand US$50 Million In Largest Ransom Ever

Taiwanese tech giant Acer has been breached by a ransomware attack and hackers are demanding the largest known ransom ever of US$50 million (~RM205.6 million), Bleeping Computer reported.

REvil, the hacker group responsible for the attack, reportedly announced the breach on their data leak site and showed images of allegedly stolen files as proof – documents including financial spreadsheets, bank balances, and bank communications.

Bleeping Computer’s report suggested that hackers may have exploited a Microsoft Exchange vulnerability to carry out their attack. Recently, Microsoft blamed China-backed hackers for breaching their Exchange servers, resulting in tens of thousands of victims around the world.

Attacks using that route reportedly spiked dramatically since Microsoft’s announcement.

In response to enquiries, Acer issued a generic statement to Bleeping Computer and other media outlets, saying that the company constantly monitors its IT systems and that it has “reported recent abnormal situations observed to the relevant law enforcement and data protection authorities in multiple countries.”

The company did add that there was an ongoing investigation and that it couldn’t comment further due to security reasons.

At US$50 million, the ransom is the largest on record, surpassing REvil’s previous US$30 million (~RM123.3 million) demand for the cyberattack on Dairy Farm, a multinational retail chain operator.

Ransomware attacks have become startlingly frequent in recent times. CD Projekt Red, developer of The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077, was hit with a ransomware attack in February, resulting in its employees being reportedly locked out of their work VPN. The company refused to pay the ransom.