A group of UK and US-based hackers known collectively as Scattered Spider are believed to be behind the breach which saw them stealing customer data.
The cyber attack, which began over Easter, is so far estimated to have cost the firm £300m, with online services continuing to be disrupted until at least July.
This week, it was reported that the hackers sent an extortion email to Marks and Spencer’s CEO Stuart Machin on 23 April.
M&S has struggled with the fallout from the cyber attack which has cost them an estimated £300m(Photos: Hollie Adams/Reuters)
The group wrote: “We have marched the ways [sic] from China all the way to the UK and have mercilessly raped your company and encrypted all the servers.”
How did the hackers breach M&S security?
The chain believes that human error was to blame for the breach rather than any weakness in the company’s systems or cyber defence.
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Jen Ellis, a cyber security expert who sits on the Cabinet Office’s Government Cyber Advisory Board, said the breach should be a warning to all other firms with an online presence to toughen their defences.
“That’s a misunderstanding of how this works. If you are a business that operates on the internet, you have the potential to be hit by a cyber attack.
Scattered Spider are a loose collective of hackers who first emerged in 2022. The National Crime Agency is focusing its investigations on the group over the M&S hack.
DragonForce, like other ransomware groups, offers affiliate hackers their brand and technology on their darknet site in exchange for a reported 20 per cent take of any ransom.
A group using the name Dragon Force has claimed responsibility for an attempted hack of Harrods and the infiltration of IT networks at the Co-op.
Are hackers uniting to cause chaos?
“The members of Scattered Spider behind this attack would be yet another set of DragonForce’s many customers,” she said, adding that she had only started hearing DragonForce mentioned this year.
“The ransomware market is a very complex, mature, sophisticated market that has people who offer specialisms.”
According to reports, DragonForce recently included a warning to crooks not to attack targets in the Commonwealth of Independent States, which includes Russia and former Soviet republics.
Scattered Spider, meanwhile, are believed to be English-speaking teenagers and young people from the UK and the US.
“I am emphatic that ransomware attacks are not by and large targeted, that they are incredibly opportunistic, but with Scattered Spider that might not be the case.
Hackers worked undetected for over two days
Hackers who launched the cyber attack on Marks & Spencer went undetected for up to 52 hours.
“It could have easily been one person who just had a lot of access, and the attackers use that as their foothold,” he said.
An M&S spokesperson said: “Our stores are back to normal for our customers and have been for some time.
“We are getting on with providing the best quality products and service for our customers.”
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