Coca-Cola Hit by Ransom Attack
Cyberattack Shakes Up Data Protection at Major Drink Brand
A few days ago on the 22nd May, renowned fizzy drink brand, Coca-Cola, was amongst the names to appear on a dark web leak site run by the Everest ransomware gang. This group of cyber criminals claimed to have stolen 959 employees’ personal data, most of which connected to their Middle East distributor, and gave the company just 5 days to contact them and pay a ransom.
After time ran out, these cyber criminals released a link on the 27th May to the entire stolen dataset. According to researchers at Cybernews, this dataset contained a total of 1104 files consisting of extremely sensitive data, most of which connected to employees in Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Information included:
- Personal numbers
- Full names
- Dates of birth
- Nationalities
- IDs or Passport issue and expiry dates
- Residential addresses
- Occupations
- ID or passport numbers
- Sponsor numbers
While Coca-Cola may face legal challenges and reputation damage from this attack, the especially concerning danger lies in the lasting threat to employees’ identities, which could affect them for the rest of their lives.
“The exposure of personal documents, such as IDs and Passports, poses a serious identity theft and fraud risk to affected employees,” said the Cybernews research team. “They could suffer from credit card and loan fraud, tax fraud, more personalised social engineering attacks, and account takeover.”
Coca-Cola has currently made no public comments in response to this breach, as of the date of this blog.
As more and more major companies fall victim to vicious cyberattacks, it becomes increasingly vital to ensure your own organisation is protected. If they can be breached, so can you. Get in touch with our expert cyber security department to find out exactly what steps you can take to protect your business from online threats.
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Information by Cybernews and Hackread