On November 3rd and November 8th, trading app Robinhood and retail giant MediaMarkt experienced data security incidents. Both suffered from Ransomware attacks that occurred through social engineering techniques and haven’t recovered from them since then.
Let’s see what happened to Robinhood and MediaMarkt.
Investing Robinhood App 2021 Data Breach
Robinhood offers low-volume US share trading for anyone looking to invest. It recently exploded in popularity after being used widely by speculative GameStop investors.
It hasn’t been long after the trading frenzy and things aren’t looking so good on Q4 for them. This security breach exposed data from seven million users (five million emails and two million names) which the company assures it’s “a limited amount of personal information.”
Spokespersons also said a smaller group (of about 310 people) did get their names, dates of birth, and US zip codes leaked. Furthermore, around 10 or so had “more extensive account details revealed.”
It hasn’t been confirmed what exact details are these, but they do not believe financial information and social security numbers were stolen in the breach.
So far, the company’s security officer (Caleb Sima) stated that they owe it to their customers to be transparent and act with integrity.
“Following a diligent review, putting the entire Robinhood community on notice of this incident now is the right thing to do.”
That means, they’ll continue to make appropriate disclosures to affected people in the following weeks. You can get more updates on this news on Robinhood’s blog.
Retail MediaMarkt 2021 Data Breach
Similarly and just a few days later (Sunday evening into Monday morning), several MediaMarkt stores throughout Europe suffered a ransomware attack that encrypted servers and workstations primarily from the Netherlands and Germany.
While online sales continue to function as expected on this whole week of Black Friday deals, IT systems were shut down to prevent the attack’s spread, meaning, cash registers at affected stores aren’t accepting credit cards or printing receipts.
They’re also preventing massive returns due to the blockage of purchase history.
Internal MediaMarkt communications also advise employees to avoid encrypted systems.
This is a smart move, considering Hive’s ransomware pushed an initial ransom demand of $240 million. Hive ransomware is known for stealing files and later publishing them on “HiveLeaks” if the ransom is not paid.
Considering MediaMarkt is Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer, it may not seem like much for the company but still is absurdly high for an attack of this type. These large demands are common between Ransomware gangs, where they allow room for negotiation and end up receiving just a fraction of what was first demanded.
There hasn’t been much news since then, but an official statement from the company:
“The MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group and its national organizations became the target of a cyberattack. The company immediately informed the relevant authorities and is working at full speed to identify the affected systems and repair any damage caused as quickly as possible. In the stationary stores, there may currently be limited access to some services.
MediaMarktSaturn continues to be available to its customers via all sales channels and is working intensively to ensure that all services will be available again without restriction as soon as possible.
The company will provide information on further developments on the topic.”