Arnold Clark hit with Ransomware Attack

Arnold Clark, the Glasgow-based automobile company, has recently been attacked by cybercriminals from the hacking ring ‘Play’ which is now threatening to release a large amount of customers’ data on the dark web.

The hackers have reportedly posted around 15 gigabytes (GB) of data so far, however, they plan to dump another 467GB unless Arnold Clark pays a multimillion-pound ransom.

Arnold Clark issued a statement to an online news outlet in which they refused to comment on the ransom demand, however, they did say that they were continuing to investigate the incident “as a priority”.

“We take the security and safety of our customer data very seriously and accurate identification of any potential compromise of that data remains our primary focus. Once we have a full picture of all the data that is potentially compromised, we will be contacting our customers to make them aware.

We will continue to take all necessary actions to minimise any impact on our customers and third-party partners. We are liaising with the relevant regulatory authorities over this incident, especially the ICO and the police.”

One of Arnold Clark’s customers has come forward to say that she had received an email from an unknown mailbox, which held a link to her personal data.

It was reported that the Play hacking ring had gotten its name out after staging multiple attacks on government websites in Latin America.

Arnold Clark is now trying to recover from the cyberattack after having to cut their internet off to protect customer data from further exploitation.

The attacks took place just before Christmas last year and the automobile company was yet to get their internet back up even after the beginning of January.

Arnold Clark’s external cyber security consultants originally raised the issue as they had noticed “suspicious traffic on our network” on the 23rd of December.

Once, Arnold Clark’s own cyber security team had confirmed this, they opted to “bring down our network voluntarily as a purely protective measure”, also adding “Our priority has been to protect our customers’ data, our systems, and our third-party partners.

While this has been achieved, this action has caused temporary disruption to our business and unfortunately our customers.”

Also revealing that their external security partners have been carrying out a review of their IT infrastructure and their network.

As a result of the attacks and their network going down, Arnold Clark had been unable to continue with vehicle handovers to their customers.

Cyber security attacks like these can ruin businesses, as many smaller businesses struggle to bounce back.

If your business needs help with cyber security, contact us and see how we can help you.