M&S chairman quizzed by MPs on “traumatic” cyber attack

Evening Standard

Marks & Spencer’s “traumatic” cyber attack was believed to be instigated by hacking group Scattered Spider and a ransomware operation run by former computer gamers named DragonForce, its chairman has said.Archie Norman, who was quizzed by MPs, refused to say whether or not the retailer paid the group’s ransom money following the hack.M&S was left unable to take any online orders for more than six weeks when its systems were targeted by hackers at the end of April.

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00:00We took an early decision that nobody at M&S would deal with the threat actor directly.

00:06We felt the right thing was to leave this to the professionals who have experience in the matter.

00:14Part is also, I don't know, because we don't know who they are or how they were,

00:22but part is, these are people who quite probably enjoy what they do.

00:27It's believed that this group were former computer gamers who graduated into cyber.

00:34That may not be true. I'm relying entirely on hearsay.

00:39I think that's a business decision and it's a principle decision.

00:46The question you have to ask, and I think all businesses should ask, is when they look at the demand,

00:54what are they getting for it? Because once your systems are compromised and you're going to have to rebuild anyway,

01:01maybe they've exfiltrated data that you don't want to publish, maybe there's something there,

01:08but in our case, substantially the damage has been done.

01:16They're not supporting awareness. They're not supporting them.

01:18They're not working with them at the other end.

01:19They say, what is their job a lot more than they do?

01:20You have to show up at the end of the day.

01:21They're not working with them. They're not working with them.

01:23They used to be new and they were not working with them.

01:25They used to be super beta if they are.

01:26And I think that they are working with them.

01:28But if they were doing that, they were not working with their own tips.

01:29And so that they didn't deliver an understanding of how they can be.

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